Rootdown 'Cole Ranch' Riesling 2022

Profile & Story

Rootdown is the label of winemaker-owner Mike Lucia, who grew up in Healdsburg, worked at Ridge Vineyards, earned a viticulture degree from Fresno State, and served as assistant winemaker at Copain before founding Rootdown in 2014. In 2019 Rootdown acquired Cole Ranch, a vineyard at 457 meters elevation between the Ukiah valley floor and Anderson Valley that was originally planted in 1973 and became its own AVA in the 1980s -- the smallest in the country. This head-trained, dry-farmed Riesling comes from those original 1973 vines, grown on silty clay loam with pockets of limestone; the fruit was foot-treaded before bladder pressing and fermented in 230-gallon eggs and neutral barrels.