Monte Rio is a small town most people drive through on the way to somewhere else.

It sits where the Russian River bends toward the Sonoma Coast surrounded by redwood country, fog country, and the kind of California that doesn't make it onto wine labels or tourism campaigns. There’s a river bar, a bridge, a café on the water, a historic movie theatre. Working people who actually live there.

The name stuck because the place made sense. Monte Rio — mountain river — is built on convergence. Forest and coast. River and vineyard. A working town in the middle of wine country that never forgot it was a working town. That's the spirit the wines are after.

Our roots are in Lodi, where the oldest vines in California have been growing since before anyone thought to call it terroir. Focusing on organically farmed vines, sourcing from family farms and grapes that California planted and then largely forgot. The winemaking gets out of the way and lets them be what they are.

This is California wine the way it was made before it became something to collect or compete over. Wine with somewhere to be. Good wine for everyone — not just people who know about wine.