Arnot-Roberts

Arnot-Roberts is one of California's most genuinely counter-cultural and intellectually compelling small-production wine programs. Duncan Arnot Meyers and Nathan Lee Roberts — friends since childhood, winemakers since their early twenties — founded the label in 2001 with a philosophy that deliberately rejected the mainstream California wine canon: no Cabernet Sauvignon, no commercial Chardonnay in the dominant style, no wines made to appeal to the critics whose 90-point scores drove the California market.

Instead, Duncan and Nathan have spent two decades sourcing from the most unusual, historically significant, and geologically distinct vineyard sites they can identify in California: Trousseau Gris from a heritage Sonoma County site, Ribolla Gialla from a Napa Valley planting, Syrah from extremely cool Petaluma Gap terrain, Chardonnay from high-elevation Napa Valley sites that few producers have explored. The result is a portfolio that looks more like a European wine map than a California one — and that has earned Arnot-Roberts a national reputation as the most intellectually adventurous fine wine program operating in the Bay Area wine scene.

The Healdsburg appointment tasting provides one of California wine's most unusual and genuinely educational experiences: a conversation about varieties that most California producers ignore, from sites that most California producers haven't discovered, made by two winemakers whose entire career has been built on the conviction that California wine has barely scratched the surface of what's possible.