A raucous , one-night extravaganza, featuring wines that are alive, memorable, and very delicious. I’ll be pouring our (Workshop Cellars) wines from the 2021 and 2022 vintage. I farmed the fruit, made the wines, and with them now in bottle, can't wait to share them with you.

But this class is about more than Workshop Cellars.  We'll taste bottles from all over California, all made by small producers committed to cranking out wines with character.  Many of these producers will be new to you, but all deserving of attention.  

We'll drink whites and we'll drink reds.  Maybe a rosé?  But most of these bottles will fall under the umbrella of what is called 'natural wine'.  Admittedly, it’s not a great term. It’s open to interpretation, and means different things to different people. But at its core, it’s a winemaking ethos (note: using terms like ethos is why wine gets a bad rap) focused on eliminating that which is not needed. Why use commercial yeasts if native yeast already live on the grapes? Why add acid if, instead, you can harvest the fruit before it loses too much acid? Why add sulfur if it hides the flavors of the wine?  

The more actions one takes on the wine, the more it becomes about the process, and not the fruit. Both approaches work. The marketplace is full of crafted and sculpted wines which are delightful. Others, however, see their role as intermediary, between the farmer and your wineglass. Either way, this reads as gobbledygook, so I hope you can attend to taste that which is so hard to put into words.  And I promise, no lab experiments.  These are delicious wines, period.

I'll bring you the best of what I have discovered during my five year hiatus in the Golden State, and as always, an array of the word's best cheeses and meats from Murray's Cheese Shop!