Wayfarer

Most of the Sonoma Coast sits in the fog. Fort Ross-Seaview is the exception: a band of coastal ridges that start around 900 feet and climb from there, high enough to sit above the marine layer on a summer day. The growers who petitioned for it in 2003, among them David Hirsch and Linda Schwartz of Fort Ross Vineyard, wanted the difference written down. The appellation came through in January 2012, and since 2022 it sits inside the larger West Sonoma Coast.

The neighbours tell you what kind of place it is: Hirsch, Flowers, Peay, Marcassin. Days up here are sunnier and warmer than the valleys below, and the nights are cold. Wayfarer’s own description is that the vineyard sits above the summer fog, and that in the evening the fog rolls up the ridge and blankets the vines through the night. Long days, cold nights, poor sandy soil: that is how you get ripe Pinot Noir that still tastes cool.

About twenty-one acres are Pinot Noir, eight and a half Chardonnay, and a half acre Syrah, all on Goldridge, the fine sandy loam that drains like a sieve. East-facing blocks run down slopes of 10 to 30 degrees, west-facing ones 10 to 20. Rows are six feet apart, vines three feet apart, double-Guyot pruned. The farming is organic, without certification.

Planting one clone per block means every block can be picked on its own day and made on its own, and the winemaker gets to know each one like a parcel in Burgundy. The Pinot Noir selections include Pommard, Swan, Mount Eden, Hirsch, Old Wente from Hyde and Bacigalupi, three Dijon clones, and a suitcase cutting the family says came from a grand cru in Vosne-Romanée in the 1990s. The Chardonnay is Old Wente from Berlenbach, Hyde and Mount Eden material, and Dijon 95. Mother Rock comes from the top of the ridge, where the soil is thinnest over sandstone.

Bibiana González Rave, as consulting winemaker, made the first Wayfarer vintages from 2012. Todd Kohn joined as her assistant at the start of 2013 and took over as winemaker in December 2017, so 2018 is his first vintage in charge. The approach has stayed quiet. Pinot Noir is sorted by hand and mostly destemmed, with between four and fifteen per cent whole cluster depending on the wine and the year. Fermentation is on native yeast, and the punch-downs are done by hand, each tank tasted every day to decide how many it needs. Only the free-run wine goes to barrel.

The Chardonnay ferments in barrel on its own yeasts, goes through full malolactic, and spends about fifteen months on its gross lees before bottling, unfined and unfiltered. A second label, WF2, began with the 2019 vintage. In 2020, when the fires put smoke over the coast, the family didn’t bottle the estate Pinot Noirs at all and made only WF2. That kind of decision is the best evidence of what a house cares about.

James Molesworth at Wine Spectator, 95 points for The Estate 2023 and the eighth spot in the 2025 Top 100. Antonio Galloni at Vinous, 96 for The Estate 2022 and 95 for the 2023. The Wine Advocate, 98+ for the 2018 Wayfarer Vineyard Pinot Noir. Jeb Dunnuck, 98 for Mother Rock in both 2021 and 2023. Virginie Boone at Wine Enthusiast, 95 for the 2016.

The story the family tells about the start is that Helen Turley looked at the site and said it could be the La Tâche of California. That is a lot to hang on a hillside. Twenty-odd years and a run of scores like these later, it no longer sounds like a sales line.