Founded by San Francisco-based partners Evan Anderson and Cameron Foxgrover, VOON produces excellent Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from the organic vineyards in Sta. Rita Hills. The winery hit the ground running with its impressive, initial 2020 vintage, and the next two have proved equally impressive. Winemaker Jessica Gasca, whose own Story of Soil wines are also worth seeking out, lends her deft touch to VOON's elegant, less extracted interpretations of both Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, while Matt Brady (whose day job is head winemaker at Samsara) was tapped to make one of California’s few Grüner Veltliners. That wine, the 2023 VOON Sta. Rita Hills Grüner Veltliner ($38), uses fruit from the organically farmed Fiddlestix Vineyard and Spear Vineyards. It’s a lightly herbal/peppery, intensely flavorful white (that happens to be excellent with Peking duck).Anderson and Foxgrover also embrace their role as a LGBTQ+ owned winery, and they donate each year to a charity that supports their values and beliefs. In 2024, that was the Trevor Project, which is the leading nonprofit suicide-prevention and crisis-intervention organization for LGBTQ+ youth.

Simply good grapes, simply made. That’s the second most common cliché among wineries these days about how they make awesome wines, and we’ve found it to be untrue much of the time. Too often there’s too much of a heavy hand, even in expensive wines. That especially bothers us when it comes to Pinot Noir, which should be ephemeral and speak in a quiet voice. So we were delighted to taste this Voon Wines ‘Nada from Sta. Rita Hills ($58, sent by the winery). “It looks, smells and tastes like honest Pinot Noir,” we wrote. “Good aromatic fruit, beautifully balanced in the mouth, with a long, somewhat luxurious finish. This did not have any of the ‘too big Pinot Noir’ stuff. Just good, ripe fruit.” It was excellent with roast pork.

"VOON Sta Rita Hills Pinot Noir 2021 ($68). Located in the cooler terroir of the Sta Rita Hills, Voon was founded during the pandemic by Evan Anderson as a small-production winery. Winemaker Jessica Gasca believes in low intervention in making Pinot with intensified flavors in the grape. So, you get a fruit-driven wine with a silky texture, ready to drink now. There is also a 2022 available at $68. (By the way, the abbreviation “Sta Hills” is used due to a protest by a Chilean winemaker who in that country’s Santa Rita region.)"

This bottling is a collaboration between San Francisco tech industry veteran Evan Anderson and Santa Barbara County winemaker Jessica Gasca. It offers delicate but highly engaging aromas of honeysuckle, cake batter, lemongrass and mint on the nose. The palate is grippy with chalky overtones that wrap around the lime peel and zesty herb flavors.  — Matt Kettmann

Crunchy aromas of raspberry and cranberry excite the nose on this bottling, which also shows sagebrush and light incense touches. The palate is zesty with an acidity that lingers long, lifting the orange peel and pomegranate flavors.  — Matt Kettmann

“Pinot Noir is notorious for being particularly difficult to find the perfect balance, both in the vineyard and the winery,” explained Evan Anderson, founder of VOON Wines in the Sta. Rita Hills. “The grapes have thin skins and ripen early, meaning that they’re particularly susceptible to pests and diseases, and can be harmed by early frosts, so they need to be managed very thoughtfully, particularly in organic vineyards like the ones that go into VOON.”The timing of harvest is of paramount importance, he added, since “picking just a day too early or a day too late can make a significant difference in the final wine. If a vintage is too warm, or you let the Pinot Noir grapes hang on the vine too long, you can get that ‘extracted’ flavor in the wine – too much jammy fruit character flavor…Balance is critical in making all wines, [but] with Pinot Noir, it can be trickier than with other grapes to achieve a balance of acidity, tannin, alcohol, and complexity of flavor because the grapes are so sensitive.”