Launching our new Wine Collection next week!
Anthill Farms is an exciting project that focuses on producing exceptional Pinot Noir from a broad range of North Coast vineyards. The properties are managed with intensive and meticulous farming practices, with minimal ecological impact. As for winemaking, there are two unchanging goals: to make wines that express the growing site and the characteristics of the vintage above all else, and to make wines that, simply put, taste good. These goals require gentle handling from crushing to bottling, judicious use of oak, and, perhaps most importantly, leaving the wine alone as much as possible.
“We didn’t know whether the name was really great or really dumb,” admits Anthill Farms Winery partner Webster Marquez. “It came about because we’re all winemakers and people would see us all scrambling around trying to grab the same hose at once; they said it was like watching a bunch of ants.” This trio of ants—Marquez, Anthony Filiberti and David Low—met while working at Sonoma’s Williams Selyem. Says Marquez, “We realized that we have the same approach: using Pinot Noir—the most ‘transparent’ grape in the world—to communicate the way vineyards from cooler areas create distinctive wines.” The partners themselves farm many of the small plots where they buy their grapes, and the results of this labor of love are remarkably seductive wines that combine concentration and finesse. Now that the company has grown from producing 200 cases in 2004 to 1,800 this year, the trio’s work is becoming ever more demanding. Notes Marquez, “It’s a good thing we’re young and don’t need much sleep.” –Food & Wine Magazine’s “Most Promising New Winery” 2009
WINES
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HAWK HILL
Above the town of Freestone, Hawk Hill Vineyard is perched on a steep, Goldridge soil covered slope just a few miles from the Pacific. Shaped by the coastal climate, this low yielding vineyard is farmed by the Yarak family. The two decades old vines work late into the fall to ripen and develop detailed flavors in its tiny berries.
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ABBEY-HARRIS
This two-acre vineyard sits at 900 to 1100 feet, facing south above the town of Boonville in the Anderson Valley. Its soils are part of the Wolfey-Bearwallow complex: roughly half the vineyard has very pale, sandy soil mixed with pink quartz, while the other half has more organic matter as well as large shale outcroppings. We continue to farm and manage the vineyard with able help from owners Dona Abbey and Dan Harris.
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COMPTCHE RIDGE
This remote vineyard is located in a small natural clearing above the town of Comptche, just inland from the northern Mendocino County coast. Owned and managed by the Weir family, Comptche Ridge is dry-farmed on a complex mix of fine sandy-clayey Franciscan soils, and is ringed completely by high redwoods and Douglas-fir. This vineyard is planted primarily to Swan clone.
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BAKER RANCH
Baker Ranch sits deeper in the Anderson Valley west of the hamlet of Philo, up above the virgin redwood groves of Hendy Woods. The vineyard sits on a mid-elevation east-facing slope on the south side of the valley, on very shallow slate-based soils of the Casabonne-Wohly complex. The soils have a high mineral content and an unusually high pH for California. The vines themselves were planted almost twenty years ago; they are rigorously farmed by the Baker family.
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PEUGH
This head-trained vineyard sits smack dab in the middle of the Russian River Valley, on the plains that make up the northwestern outskirts of Santa Rosa. The faded brown soils, known as Huichica loam, offer an excellent mix of low fertility and rapid drainage. Most notable about the site, however, is the age of the vines: we don’t know the exact age, but the best indication is that they were planted in the early 1940s, making it some of the oldest producing Chardonnay in the state.
