California old vine vineyards with something beautiful to say

I’ve always been one to wonder why things are the way that they are. Obsessed with mythology as a child, I started college studying microbiology, assisting in yeast genomics research that sought to better understand alcohol excretion pathways in the cell. My philosophical musings about yeast were somewhat out of place though, and I found the art history department more willing to indulge my questions. Art history concerns itself with asking “why does it look the way it does,” and “what does it mean.” Like art, wine is a human product, the result of social and cultural movements, but it is also a product of nature, shaped by the weather and geography, and yeast turning grapes into wine.

After graduating from a liberal arts college with a degree in art history, I naturally found myself working in restaurants. In 2013 I had a glass of Éric Texier’s Saint-Julien-en-Saint-Alban Syrah and my fate was sealed. Growing up in California, red table wine was ubiquitous. I hadn’t realized until that moment that wine could be beautiful, and I knew I wanted to bring that sort of beauty into the world.

It’s a common refrain, but wine is made in the vineyard. I work only with the most interesting and magical sites I find, sprinkled throughout Northern California. In the winery, my interest is in traditional winemaking. Science has a bad name in the world of terroir driven wine, but science is observation (and replication) to understand nature. Well before germ theory, winemakers in the Rhône and Burgundy had identified methods of making Syrah and Chardonnay, respectively, that we now understand are scientifically sound. By combining my study of traditional winemaking techniques with scientific observation and broader research, I seek to make the most beautiful wines I can.

I worked my first vintage in 2014 at Unti in Dry Creek, Sonoma, before moving to Rhys in the Santa Cruz Mountains for the 2015 harvest. In 2016, I started pruning at Mount Eden Vineyards, also in the Santa Cruz Mountains, before heading off to France to work with Éric Texier in the Rhône Valley. From 2016 through 2020, while launching my winery back home in California, I worked for Farm Wine Imports where I had the absolute honor to learn from my winemaking idols in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and here in California.

I seek to make wines that have something interesting to say, from vineyard sites in California that are unique, historic, or simply magical.

- Claire