Anakota

THE HISTORY

The story of Anakota begins deep in the heart of Knights Valley in rural Sonoma County. Located in an ancient volcanic zone, this relatively untouched and unknown place offers incredibly unique and diverse soils with a climate perfectly suited to Bordeaux varietals. Sourced from estate-owned vineyards, Anakota is a collection of wines that embody the rustic elegance and spirit of rural Sonoma County. Rising more than 4,000 feet above sea level, Mount St. Helena looks down on our estate-owned vineyards which are quietly situated on the rugged flanks of the Mayacams Mountain Range.

THE PHILOSOPHY

Back in the late 1990s, we began exploring new locations to grow Grand Cru-level Cabernet Sauvignon. Our goal was to find a site that could deliver the opulence and concentration of Napa coupled with the acidity, precision and age-worthiness of Sonoma. We found the perfect site in the Knights Valley AVA, a little-known wine region that earned AVA status in 1983. We named our ranch Anakota and in 1997 began surveying the terrain, analyzing the soils and planting vines. Today, under the direction of Vigneron Pierre Seillan, we produce small quantities of single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignons from our two hillside estate vineyards: Helena Dakota and Helena Montana, as well as a blended Knights Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Over his half-century of winemaking, Pierre has developed and refined his proprietary “micro-cru” farming/winemaking principles. Based on experience, observation, experimentation and intuition, this system considers that every vineyard is an intricate patchwork of soils, microclimates, exposures and elevations. Rather than treat each site as a single entity, Pierre divides each property into small blocks and sub-blocks. These vineyards-within-vineyards – often as small as one acre – are designed to mirror the subtle changes in the soils, terrain and microclimates. These micro-crus are farmed individually to ensure uniformly ripe grapes that bear the message of the soil. Each micro-cru is harvested and vinified separately. Two wines vinified from identical clones and rootstocks, but originating in radically different micro-crus, will produce radically different wines.