Rootdown Pinot Noir, Cole Ranch 2020 (750 ml)

Mendocino County. This comes from the Cole Ranch in Mendocino, America's smallest AVA and recently purchased by Rootdown's winemaker Mike Lucia and his wife. Organically farmed, native yeast fermented in used oak, and with low sulfur addition. This is a California wine looking to the Burgundy style of restraint. The nose shows a tart cherry, spice, bay leaf, cranberry, and just there earth. The palate is light in weight with cherry, savory herbs, earth and a light bay leaf note to finish.

Mike Lucia is no newcomer to the Sonoma wine scene. He has been laying tracks in the world of wine since he first landed in Healdsburg as a teenager back in ‘92 and started rubbing shoulders with local winemakers during after-school restaurant gigs. Before long, Mike worked harvest with DeLoach in the Russian River Valley, an experience which led to jobs at many other well- respected wineries such as Ridge. Sometime in the late ‘90s, Mike fell in love with the wines of Burgundy and sought to find a similarly nuanced, terroir-driven experience at home.

For all wines, Mike harvests his fruit to lead with earth and texture, rather than only fruit. Stylistically, these wines have low alcohol, high acid and more delicate, brighter color. His style remains very decidedly hands-off, allowing the grapes and specific sites to speak for themselves. He ferments the wines with native yeasts, no new oak, and sulfur only in amounts equal to what is found naturally on the vine. Mike’s technical prowess as a winemaker is finely tuned, but he usually prefers to let curiosity inform what happens with his Rootdown wines. He is constantly having fun “making decisions that he shouldn’t make,” and always playing with “What if?”