ALL WINES

AROMA
pink grapefruit, guava jelly, white rose
FLAVOR
pickled strawberry, candied orange peel, nectarine pit
FOOD PAIRINGS
salmon burger, salad Niçoise, fig+burrata toast

As has been our practice since 2023, we took our blocks of
octogenarian dry-farmed, head-trained Carignan, as well as a couple of
bins of Grenache Gris abandoned by another winery. To brighten (and
lighten) the wine, we stopped crushing the fruit before pressing and
simply whole-cluster pressed it. This newer approach to what is our
17th installment of Rosé just hits different. The abnormally cool growing
season in 2025 was well-suited to producing bright wines. Perfect for
Rosé. Once again, the wine comes exclusively from Rory and Vince
Bartolomei’s vineyard in Talmage, Mendocino. Visiting Talmage feels like
rewinding the clock a century, a place where locals still ride into town on
horseback and time moves at its own pace. The Bartolomei brothers
are as singular as the place itself — characters rooted deeply in land
and lineage. Their ranch, planted more than eighty years ago, is home
to stoic old vines that have been dry-farmed for generations, weathering
decades with quiet resilience while many of their neighbors have given
up on grapes. Drinking Barto Rosé is a vote with your feet in support of
original, authentic Mendocino growers.

AROMA
lemon bar, loquat, crushed chalk
FLAVOR
white tea, Meyer lemon, cheese rind
FOOD PAIRINGS
brown butter scallops, lemon risotto, potato gratin

In 2022, a much tougher vintage, we declassified
barrels of all of our single vineyard Chardonnays into
Estero. The decision wrecked the COGS on the wine,
but resulted in one of our favorite versions of this wine
in some time. Maybe since 2015? In 2023, which was
a near-perfect vintage with no heat, fires, or drama of
any kind and October harvest dates (like we used to
see in the 1990s), we decided to repeat the approach.
So this Estero got a pedigree bump. It's 57% Burnside
(borders Littorai) + 19% Piner + 10% Tidal Break + 8%
Skycrest + 6% Casa Seca. And it's 100% delicious.
We've also been over-vintaging this wine for the past
few vintages, so it gets the long elevage and the
complexity and Burgo redux that comes with it.
The 3.3 pH means your mouth's gonna water.

AROMA

crushed black cherry, red licorice, slate

FLAVOR

kirsch, coastal berries, corriander

FOOD PAIRINGS

braised pork shoulder, laquered short rib, charred eggplant

NOTES

We went back to Pocket Canyon in 2024. A fellow winemaker we

know from Punchdown Cellars farms it organically for Anthill Farms

and LIOCO exclusively. This sweet little vineyard gave us pea-sized

berries and a gusher of sour red fruit in 2023. The site is planted with

prized Swan clone on a steep slope enclosed by redwoods in a

fog-choked canyon west of Forestville. It's dry-farmed by default

because the coyotes chew on the drip lines, rendering them

ineffective. Micro yields and intense concentration result. The other

component in the wine is Sealift Vineyard on the West Sonoma

Coast near Annapolis. Just a few miles from the Pacific, Sealift is

constantly lashed by ocean winds and fog and provides a savory,

saline quality that marries well with the red-fruit notes. The wine

showcases what we love about Pinot Noir from the Sonoma Coast

— energy, mouthwatering acidity, and signature tone.

aroma
lemon blossom, orchard fruits, crushed stone
flavor
mineral, pomelo, white tea
food
fish & chips, fresh oysters, shrimp Scampi

You've heard about 2023, right? The return to a classic
California vintage. Wet spring. Good size crop. October
harvest dates. Low blood pressure. ;) The 2023 wines are
super fresh, fruit dense, and because of the extended hang
times—very aromatic. For this year's installment, we went back
to the original SoCo "recipe." All the fruit came from ranches in
the Russian River Valley / Sonoma Coast corridor. All of it was
hand picked in early to mid-October (in itself, a news story).
The fruit was crushed—in this case, foot tread, back at the
winery, and pressed out into stainless steel tanks. For the first
time in many years, we elected not to blend down any
barrel-fermented lots into SoCo—it's 100% tank fermented
and aged, and it shows the Chablis-like tension and minerality
we find only in the coldest growing years. This wine is
mouthwatering and buttressed with a low 3.4 pH. Opened
bottles should hold up for several days in the bar fridge...if
they last that long.

aroma

salted plum, blackberry flower, shitake

flavor

coastal berries, rosehips, Orange Pekoe tea

food

rotisserie chicken, hot smoked salmon, mushroom tempura

In the spring of 2022 we signed a vital grape contract that will raise the quality of Mendo Pinot Noir significantly. After many years of petitioning, the township of Comptche on the far Mendocino Coast received its AVA status. There are just three vineyards in the entire AVA and two of them are now LIOCO monopole. This new partnership with grower John Peterson--whose family were homesteaders on this remote coastal rainforest in the 1800s--will provide LIOCO with +/-40 tons of pristine Pinot Noir each year. Most of it will go into Mendo Pinot Noir. The '23 installment is infused with this exciting new Comptche component, which brings a black and purple-fruited, coniferous element to wine. The Comptche lots were blended with stalwarts from the Anderson Valley, The Cole Ranch, and the Potter Valley. The AV component adds some characteristic floral notes. The Cole Ranch piece contributes some pleasing structure. And the Potter Valley piece brings lift and levity care of some Beaujolais-clone Pinot Noir fruit historically sources for Rosè programs. We feel this wine from disparate but essentially Mendocino ranches blend out to give a wide aperture view of this wild, evergreen county and make an authentic expression of Mendocino Pinot Noir.

aroma
violet, blackberry, rosemary
flavor
Italian plum, dried fig, iron
food
stuffed Cubanelles, pizza funghi, shepherd's pie

The wildfires in 2020 necessitated a shift in fruit sourcing, and the extreme drought / massive winter frost of 2021 left us with too little fruit to bottle an Indica. The 2022 was a return to form as we tapped all three original fruit sources, ramped the carbonic maceration, and bottled a wine that everyone agreed was flat out delicious. It sold out before we could get the 2023 to bottle. Fear not! The 2023 is now bottled and it, like so many of our 2023s shows the once-in-ten-years fruit quality that this vintage will soon be known for. It is a blend of three historic Mendocino ranches—some dry-farmed, 1940s Carignan from Bartolomei (Talmage) and 1960s McCutchen (Pine Mountain), plus a healthy dollop of rare 1940s Valdiguie from Lolonis (Redwood Valley). We rocked 50% whole cluster, with two tanks going through carbonic maceration. Further, we pressed the juice off the skins early and "went to barrel sweet" to highlight the crunchy freshness of this wine. The result is chillable, medium weight red—with some grip—that reminds of us Cote de Brouilly but is unabashedly Californian.