2016 Anthill Farms Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast 750 ml

This is how some of California’s most in demand wineries have started out. A team of young talented winemakers, coveted vineyard locations, and plain hard work.

The winery started out as a passion project between three friends passionate about Northern Coast Pinot, making 250 cases in their first vintage in 2004 with $9,000 from their own pockets. Production is still extremely limited today, with total cases per year topping out around 1,400. It’s only due to a longtime relationship—The French Laundry was one of the first to carry Anthill when Sur Lucero MS was a sommelier there—that we were able to secure you an allocation of some of this highly coveted, luscious Sonoma Pinot.

In a New York Times tasting of Anderson Valley Pinot Noirs, Anthill came in at #1, as well as the best value. Antonio Galloni regards their releases as “some of the most distinctive wines being made in California today” while Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate ranks them among “the most transparent, graceful Pinots” in the state. SF Gate claims they have a formula “for producing some of California’s most compelling single-vineyard Pinots.” Anthill Farms has been called the “rock stars of Pinot” by the Wall Street Journal.

And yet, they remain under-the-radar for swaths of Pinot lovers across the country. Why? They don’t make a wine unless they are inspired by a particular patch of terroir.

Webster Marquez, Anthony Filiberti (an alum of Bergström and Hafner), and David Low met while working at Williams-Selyem following years of cellar rat apprenticeship around the country. They didn’t want to make wines that tasted like Burgundy, nor were they interested in the extremely ripe, heavy styles coming out of California. With day jobs taking care of the bills, they focused on tiny-production, cool-climate Pinot drawn off meticulously-farmed vineyards, utterly transparent of the sites.

That philosophy shines through in this ravishing 2016 release, which hails from two of the coolest parts of Sonoma: on the edge of the Petaluma Gap, west of Sebastopol, and further north on the high coast, on the first and second ridge inland from the coast. Chilly Pacific breezes invest grapes with scintillating acidity and prolong the growing season into October, yielding marvelous complexity and expressivity. This is a rare shot at one of the vintage’s beauties.

Amassing buckets of critical praise and placements on top wine lists including Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry, Anthill Farms is one of the Northern Coast’s greatest and most exciting wineries. Vinous’ Antonio Galloni sent Anthill Farms’ 2016 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir rocketing to the top of the value charts, calling it “a fabulous appellation-level Pinot” that’s “endowed with terrific depth,” while Decanter’s own 93-point review praised its “shimmering nuances of freshness.”

Led by a trio that cut their teeth at Sonoma’s landmark Williams-Selyem winery, they are leading the pack when it comes to cool-climate, non-interventionist winemaking, producing reds of extraordinary delicacy, restraint, and structure.