MacRostie
Sonoma Coast Chardonnay
Delicate floral aromas introduce this wine followed by lemon citrus and peach stone fruit notes. This wine has a soft entry with an essence of spice from a pie crust and candied orange peel flavors. There is pronounced weight in the mid-palate and finishes with a crisp yet lasting lemon citrus zest on the tongue.
Learn more & find pairings »
Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir
Very dark garnet in color, this Pinot is juicy and ripe, lush and full. The nose is café mocha and purple plums, and it’s very plush and rich in the mouth, with black cherry and chocolate flavors. Finishes clean and refreshing, with a hint of allspice.
Learn more & find pairings »
Wildcat Mountain Chardonnay
Classic pale straw in color, with profound aromas of honey, lime oil, and custard, with hints of whole-wheat toast and wet stone. In the mouth it is lush with ripe tropical fruit and manages to be very rich yet light at the same time, almost like drinking a Meyer lemon soufflé.
Learn more & find pairings »
Wildcat Mountain Pinot Noir
Very dark garnet color, with a big, bright cherry nose, sporting hints of cola, spice, cocoa, and toast. The palate is rich, juicy, and round, with more chocolate and rich, ripe raspberry flavors. The structure is positively liquid velvet, and the finish lingers on and on.
Learn more & find pairings »
Over the past three decades, MacRostie Winery and Vineyards has established itself as one of the Sonoma Coast’s defining wineries, and a leader in a bright, balanced and age-worthy style of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Today, MacRostie is guided by Sonoma County visionary and winery founder Steve MacRostie, and talented winemaker Heidi Bridenhagen, who together are making the finest wines in the winery’s storied history.
Using grapes farmed by legendary winegrowing families including the Duttons, Sangiacomos, Martinellis and Bacigalupis, and from Steve’s own Wildcat Mountain Vineyard, MacRostie’s Sonoma Coast wines have established themselves as benchmarks, offering a rare intersection between labor-intensive small-lot winemaking, fair pricing and the complexity that can only be achieved by working with the finest vineyards.
Though founded in 1987, the seeds for MacRostie Winery and Vineyards go back to 1974—to the early days of Sonoma County winemaking—when Steve began his career at Hacienda Winery. At a time when most California winemakers were fixated on Bordeaux varieties and Napa Valley, Steve and a handful of other pioneers took a different path, embracing the fog-shrouded vineyards of Sonoma County and their untapped potential for producing some of the finest Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in the world. Steve quickly gained renown as a winemaker capable of making exceptional Burgundian-variety wines. He also began to develop his own style, favoring crispness, complexity and vineyard character, as opposed to overt opulence.
In 1987, Steve established MacRostie. To make his earliest wines, he reached out to growers he knew and respected—leaders of Sonoma County winegrowing, like the Sangiacomo family. MacRostie’s wines were soon widely hailed for their unique balance of cool-climate structure and vibrant fruit. In 1992, years before the modern Pinot Noir boom, MacRostie added Pinot Noir to its portfolio, and quickly developed a devoted following for the pure and elegant style of these wines.
Several years later, inspired by a desire to cultivate his own great piece of land, Steve discovered an amazing mountainside ranch in the Petaluma Gap region on the borderlands of the Sonoma Coast. Planted to Steve’s specifications, this windswept site has become Wildcat Mountain Vineyard, and the cornerstone of the winery’s vineyard program. At the same time, in its drive to represent the entirety of the Sonoma Coast, MacRostie has continued to explore ever-farther west, to sites like Dutton Ranch and Goldrock Ridge, just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean. To capture the rich expressiveness of the entire appellation, MacRostie works with more than 30 Chardonnay vineyards and over 15 Pinot Noir sites—a remarkable level of diversity for a small winery.
In 2015, MacRostie unveiled its new state-of-the-art Pinot-focused winery and MacRostie Estate House on Westside Road in the Russian River Valley, which is also the home to Thale’s Vineyard, named after Steve’s wife. “I have always wanted a home for MacRostie that expresses who we are as a winery and what we believe in as clearly as our wines do,” says Steve. “Our new home in the Russian River Valley is a culmination of everything we have learned over our first quarter century, and a statement about who we plan to be over the next 25 years.”
MacRostie Estate House
4605 Westside Road
Healdsburg, CA 95448
(707) 473-9303 - Phone
macrostiewinery.com
Heidi Bridenhagen, Winemaker, MacRostie
A dynamic and gifted talent, Heidi is only the third winemaker in the winery’s history. A believer in the value of exploration and experimentation, Heidi has worked closely with Steve MacRostie to establish one of the Sonoma Coast’s most diverse and acclaimed vineyard programs. To preserve this diversity, Heidi does as many as 130 small fermentations each vintage. This gives Heidi an amazing palette of flavors from which to craft MacRostie’s Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs.
Our Winemaking Philosophy
At MacRostie, we work with a who’s who of the finest winegrowing sites, including more than 30 Chardonnay vineyards and over 15 Pinot Noir sites. This remarkable level of diversity allows us to explore the entirety of the Sonoma Coast, from the vibrant purity of Wildcat Mountain Vineyard to the lushness of the Russian River Valley to the nerve and ethereal aromatics of the extreme Sonoma Coast. To preserve this diversity, in the winery Steve and Heidi do as many as 130 small fermentations each vintage. While this is an incredible amount of work, when it comes time for blending, it gives us an amazing palette of flavors to work with, yielding wines of uncommon character and complexity.