Most of us can thank the famed wine writer and critic Jon Bonné for introducing us to the wonder that is Steve Matthiasson. While working as wine critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, and being frustrated by a California wine scene he described as "self-satisfied and underwhelming," he began to search out winemakers who bucked the trends of alcohol-heavy, over extracted wines so common in the industry, leading to the publication of his now seminal "The New California Wine" in 2013, and there, eleven words into chapter one, is the name Steve Matthiasson. Matthiasson became quite literally the poster child for a different kind of Napa Valley—home-grown and independent minded, masters of land and cellar, ambitious but unpretentious—a turning of the page in the crown jewel of American wine. Each year the Flora, Viognier, and Muscat of Alexandria grapes for Matthiasson's vermouth are picked very late, with some botrytis and raisins at harvest, producing a rich and complex dessert wine. The young wine is then added to a solera system of previous vintages. Blended wine is extracted from the solera, and is then infused with organic blood oranges, sour cherries, coriander and wormwood grown and harvested in Matthiasson's own gardens. Considered by Matthiasson to be a "farmhouse vermouth," the wine was bottled unfiltered and unfined. Only 305 cases produced annually. 17.0% ABV
