Cruse Wine Co. Rorick Vineyard Chardonnay 2016

Rorick Heritage Vineyard sits at 2,000 feet elevation in Calaveras County, just outside Murphys in the Sierra Foothills AVA. The Chardonnay vines are own-rooted Old Wente clones planted between 1974 and 1976 by Barden Stevenot, the figure credited with establishing modern winegrowing in Calaveras County. Matthew Rorick purchased the 75-acre property in 2013 and converted it to organic farming. The soils are schist over a limestone bedrock, which drives the wine's distinctive minerality and natural acidity.

Michael Cruse at Cruse Wine Co. handles this fruit with minimal intervention. Grapes are hand harvested and pressed using a long Champagne-style press cycle. The juice is transferred to neutral barrels where fermentation occurs spontaneously with native yeast. The wine ages approximately 16 to 18 months in neutral wood before a small sulfur addition at bottling. No fining or significant manipulation is documented for this wine.

The nose shows orange blossom, ripe pear, lemon rind, and apricot, with a thread of roasted almond running through. On the palate, the texture is viscous and oily in the way that old, low-yielding vines at elevation tend to produce, but the acidity is firm and cleansing. The finish is long and mineral, with wet stone character that points directly to the limestone bedrock beneath the vineyard.

This is a single-vineyard Chardonnay from a site that is genuinely unusual in California: ungrafted old vines on limestone at altitude, farmed organically, vinified without additives or new oak. It reflects both the specificity of the Rorick site and Cruse's restraint in the cellar.