Flatiron Wines & Spirits SF

Sonoe Hirabayashi group up in Nagano, Japan. Her family made sake, fermented soy sauce, and miso, and grew apples. She came to California to study wine, completed a number of internships at wineries around the world (Ted Lemon, Ostertag, etc.), and then settled down here to make Californian wine. She calls her winery “Six Cloves” – the name that her Japanese ancestors called their own business.

When Pauline and Géraud Fromont founded their Domaine des Marnes Blanches deep in the south of the Jura, the region (Sud Revermont) wasn't on anyone's radar. It was 2006, the husband and wife were fresh out of wine school, and they were happy to be able to come home to the Jura and build something together. Since then, so much has changed. The Jura blew up. Ganevat (from the same region) became a star and then a superstar, Labet and Miroir (likewise neighbors) became culty and then cultier. The Natural Wines of Overnoy Puffeney became legendary and spearheaded the whole movement.

Philippe Tessier is an OG Loire Valley Naturalista. Decades, now, they've been making cracklingly fresh wines full of that life force that you get from the best low-intervention wines. He checks all the mandatory boxes.  Farming: organic.  Sulfur: low to none. Yeasts: natural.