Subject to Change
Winemaker: Alex Pomerantz
Region: Central Coast
Location: Ricmond, California
Starting from a very young age, Alex always was a lover of food, wine, and hospitality. After dipping his toes in the corporate world, he packed up his car in 2011 and drove cross country for a harvest internship in pursuit of starting a wine career in Northern California. Since that first internship, Alex worked for six years heading up the winemaking, management and sales at a winery in Sonoma before starting Subject to Change in 2017. The idea stemmed from his love of natural wine, the community that surrounds it and the infinite opportunity and canvas that the California landscape provides. Layering his passion for European natural wine and his knowledge of California viticulture and wine production, Subject to Change Wine Co was born as a way to connect his love of natural wine to my love of California, the land and the culture of growing and consuming locally.
Ashanta Wines
Winemakers: Chenoa Ashton-Lewis and Will Basanta
Region: Sonoma County
Location: Sebastopol, California
Ashanta Wines are made by 5th generation Oakland native and 3rd generation winemaker, Chenoa Ashton-Lewis, and cinematographer, Will Basanta who were bitten by the natural winemaking bug right before the 2020 pandemic hit and have not looked back since. Ashanta Wines abides by zero:zero, traditional winemaking practices and makes a full range of bespoke wines. From experimental multi-fruit co-ferments, Pet-Nats, skin contact whites, field blends and elegant California Reds. Our wines are terroir driven expressions of Pachamama and her seasons. Unfined. Unfiltered. Wild yeast fermentations. Zero S02. They source their fruit from family-operated vineyards and work with growers who farm with organic and/or biodynamic practices. They hand pick some of their growers’ vineyards and sometimes, forage for wild fruit in both the wilderness and urban spaces. Ashanta Wines is currently located in Sebastopol, CA and Los Angeles, as they work with vineyards along the spine of California’s expansive landscape.
Wonderwerk LA
Winemakers: Issamu Kamide and Andrew Lardy
Region: Central Coast
Location: Los Angeles, California
@wonderwork.la
Wonderwerk (House of Fermentation) is Issamu Kamide and Andrew Lardy, two high school friends from Virginia seeking new directions in fermentation. They live in LA (Echo Park!) and make supernatural wines from all over California. They produce and bottle with their own hands and feet. Issamu and Andrew ride the wavelength from low-intervention to high-innovation, making collaborative ideas come to life in funky new ways. Wonderwerk began as a long night on a disco dancefloor (Despacio!) wound down and they didn’t want the party to end. Now, it’s flowed from there into the wines you see and drink today. Come along for the ride fam, bring your dancing shoes and an open mind, we promise they won’t disappoint.
Bergkloster
Winemaker: Jason Groebe
Region: Rheinhessen
Location: Westhofen, Germany
Located in Westhofen, Jason Groebe has taken the lead at his family owned winery Bergkloster to make wines according to his style and ideas. The family's vineyards have been organically farmed for a while now and the company has been certified since 2006. Nature, authenticity, and swag; All of which are features that characterize Jason and his quality wines. Spontaneous fermentation is standard for Jason and there is no clarification, fining or other technical frills involved in the winemaking process. The wines are aged with a lot of time and patience on the lees in old wooden barrels. Jason loves drinkability, freshness and quality. Accordingly, his wines are one thing above all: DELICIOUS!
Florèz Wines
Winemaker: James Jelks
Region: Central Coast
Location: Santa Cruz, California
Florèz Wines was founded by James Jelks in 2017. Born in Santa Cruz and raised in Davis California, Jelks is a west coast kid. After a decade of wine fascination, attending UC Davis E&V program, and working worldwide, Jelks set his sights on producing wines in Santa Cruz county. He embraces old world techniques and sensibility. Everything begins with the vineyards and the best quality starting ingredients. Some of the vineyards he is farming himself using organic practices, and dry farming management. To supplement he sources fruit from organically and sustainably farmed vineyards. James works to stay as local as possible to the Santa Cruz area. He follows through with astute craftsmanship utilizing native yeasts, eschewing additives, racking well but never filtering, carefully monitored élevage without sulfur and sur lie, and bottling with minimal effective sulfur or less. Always in pursuit of improvement James hopes to deliver wines of pleasure and ease on the body.
OSA MAJOR Wines
Winemaker: Emily Fernwood
Region: Central California
Location: Sebastopol, California
Osa Major Wines is a one woman enterprise - from trucking grapes to selling bottles and everything in between. Winemaker and owner Emily Fernwood spent the years after college traveling and working harvest gigs the world over, from California and Oregon to Australia and New Zealand, until founding Osa Major Wines in 2020. As a Bay Area native, the time felt right to return home and explore the incredible variety of geology and history that can be found in the vineyards in some of our state's unique known and lesser known wine regions, while crafting wines that explore a lighter and brighter side of California winemaking.
Domaine des Lampyres
Winemaker: François-Xavier Dauré
Region: Roussillon
Location: Rivesaltes, France
When François-Xavier Dauré (aka FX) first started his own cellar in 2015, he was working for New Zealander Tom Lubbe of Domaine Matassa in his home commune of Espira-de-l’Agly in the Agly Valley of Roussillon. Trying to squeeze in vineyard work between and around his day job at Matassa, he’d get up while it was still dark and prune vines by the light of a head torch. As this little light was bobbing up and down in the vineyard in the darkness, a friend happened to pass by and called out, ‘FX, is that you?’. ‘Yes, it’s me!’ he replied, and his friend chuckled: ‘You look like a firefly!’. And thus the domaine got its name, Domaine des Lampyres; domaine of the fireflies
Cactus Cru
Winemaker: Timo Geis
Region: Walnut Grove
Location: Sedona, Arizona
French-born and Sedona-raised, Timo Geis is the owner of Arizona’s newest natural wine production label, Cactus Cru, which focuses on making low-intervention wines with locally grown grapes. Timo was raised in close proximity to wine. His mother is from India and his father from Alsace, France, one of the great wine regions in the country, known for growing many white wine varietals, specifically Riesling and Pinot Gris. After a career in hospitality and wine importing, he decided to study winemaking at Southwest Wine Center at Yavapai College in order to fulfill his vision of producing some of the first all local, low-intervention Arizona wines. The first publicly available bottle — a low-alcohol red table wine made from cabernet sauvignon grapes grown in the hight desert of Arizona.
Marto
Winemaker: Martin Otto Wörner
Region: Rheinhessen
Location: Flonheim, Germany
Martin is one of the few young winemakers in the Rheinhessen shaking up old traditions with fresh ideas. His open mindset approach to viticulture and vinification is inspiring and the quality of his wine speaks for itself. Humble, open and conscious, Martin has already made a name for himself in the natural wine world. Martin says his natural, juicy, easily chuggable wine is meant to be enjoyed with friends and for good times. He gained his experience with natural wine legends Matassa and Gut Oggau before returning home to Flonheim to make natural wine at the family winery where he cultivates three hectares of vineyards. Marto is a young baller making fire natty juice in Germany and you need to try it.
Domaine Balansa
Winemakers: Céline Peyre and Alexandre Gressent
Region: Languedoc-Roussillon
Location: Villeneuve-les-Corbières, France
Domaine Balansa has been a family affair for several generations. Alexandre Gressent and Céline Peyre are the power couple who run it together, with the help of Céline’s parents, Bernard and Ginette. Located on the Hautes-Corbières hillsides between the AOC Fitou and IGP Vallee du Paradis appellations, they cultivate 14 hectares of old vines. Their wines are certified organic and they are in the process of fully converting to biodynamic through Demeter as of this year. Their main goal is to make high quality wines using environmentally friendly practices whilst striving to offer a true reflection of the unique and priceless Hautes Corbières terroir they call home. Their terroir is characterised by its schist rich soils which are situated on the hillsides at an altitude of 140 to 280 m and surrounded by shrubland. The climate is Mediterranean, dry, sunny and windy, which offer ideal conditions for their grapes to reach their full potential.
Vin de Lagamba
Winemaker: Alanna Lagamba
Region: Rheinhessen
Location: Flonhiem, Germany
Alanna's story goes something like this: As a 25-year-old, Alanna moves from her native Canada to Berlin, meets Martin Wörner aka Marto wines at a wine fair there, promises to help him with his next harvest in Rheinhessen, keeps the promise and falls in love with him , falls in love with wine and viticulture, proves to be a super competent winemaker, gets vines for her own wine project, wants to make a German Lambrusco, makes a German Lambrusco . And it's very, very good.
Iruai Wine
Winemakers: Chad and Michelle Westbrook Hinds
Region: Shasta-Cascade Mountains
Location: Etna, California
Iruai Winery (“ear-oo-eye" … the artist formerly known as Methode Sauvage) was started in 2013 by Chad and Michelle Westbrook Hinds in Berkeley, CA as a gypsy natural wine project, before laying down roots in the mythical Shasta-Cascade mountains of Siskiyou County.
Trading in the urban winery hustle for the vigneron life, they are exploring avant garde vineyard planting and rehabilitation techniques using the permaculture methods laid out by Masanobu Fukuoka, while formulating their own “chaos organics” method of re-enchanting the land. Truly unlike anywhere else in California, Western Siskiyou County is like a cross between Switzerland and Montana, cut with a rain shadow from Mount Shasta that divides it starkly between high mountain prairie and dense alpine forests.
Finding themselves in largely untested grape growing territory, with high elevations and a continental climate, they have turned Iruai into exploration and celebration of esoteric varieties that flourish in the Alps of Europe. While they work to grow our Western Siskiyou County estate projects, they purchase fruit and lease vineyards throughout the Shasta-Cascade, from the Trinity Alps of California to the Siskiyou Mountains of Southern Oregon.
Chad and Michelle seek to make wine with a sense of place by employing no additives, and removing no character. Their goal in the vineyard is to let the vines thrive like they would in the wild, and in the cellar, to shepherd each ferment through its own natural development and evolution.
Margins Wine
Winemakers: Megan Bell
Region: Central Coast
Location: Santa Cruz, California
Megan Bell is producing low-intervention wines using grapes from underrepresented regions, vineyards and varietals. Megan’s mission is to work with small growers to transition their vineyards from conventional to organic farming. She is making delicious wines using minimal additives during the winemaking process, thereby showcasing the vineyards the grapes come from. Prior to settling in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Megan received her BS in Viticulture and Enology from UC Davis and apprenticed in wineries all over the world. Megan Bell is a bad ass winemaker who is part of the growing movement in California to make wines from organically farmed vineyards. Her wines and her journey is inspiring to say the least!
Weingut Mann
Winemakers: Andi Mann
Region: Rheinhessen
Location: Eckelsheim, Germany
Weingut Mann is a small winery from Eckelsheim in "Rheinhessen Switzerland”—a little-known circle of wine villages fanning out south of Wöllstein that have steep hillsides and forested summits. After studying economic sciences, Andi Mann finally decided to take over his parents winery and quickly found his way to natural or low-intervention wine. Andi cultivates around 10 hectares of vineyards and tries to do it as holistically as possible. His wines are always a representation of nature, and the character of each wine is created in the vineyard.