About Assiduous Wines
Assiduous is Keegan Mayo's own project, and the name is the method. He farms organically and makes single-vineyard, single-variety wines with minimal handling in the cellar, working each site one at a time to get at what it actually is.
He came to it early and locally. Born on the Big Island of Hawai'i, he moved to Santa Cruz at eight, and his first work in the industry was a few summers at Split Rail Vineyard in Corralitos - the same three-quarter-acre Syrah parcel that Samuel Louis Smith took over farming in 2024. He graduated from the UC Davis viticulture and enology programme in 2008, spent a harvest at Mumm in Napa as a cellar hand and grape sampler, a 2009 vintage at Church Road in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, then nearly nine years at Testarossa, ending as assistant winemaker.
The results sit close to natural wine without the flag. He is not dogmatic about the term and not entirely comfortable with it, and the wines come out unusually clean and precise for the category, which is the point of the hands-off-but-hands-on approach.
The work shows in the detail. The Merlot gets ten days of carbonic maceration before being destemmed and fermented on skins for four more, then ten months in neutral French oak; the Chardonnay is hand-harvested, fermented on natural yeast and left eight months on its lees.
There is no public tasting room. The wines are sold direct and through merchants, several of whom take a significant share of the total production.
Single vineyard, single variety, minimal intervention - and no tasting room to visit.
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One site, one variety, at a timeEverything kept separate so each vineyard's identity is the whole point of the bottling.
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A properly earned CVUC Davis, Mumm Napa, a New Zealand vintage at Church Road, then nearly nine years at Testarossa as assistant winemaker.
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Natural, without the dogmaLow-intervention methods applied carefully enough that the wines stay clean and precise.
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Carbonic MerlotTen days carbonic, four more on skins, ten months in neutral oak - not a treatment Merlot usually gets here.
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Started at Split RailHis first wine work was at the Corralitos vineyard now farmed by Samuel Louis Smith, also in this catalog.
"One of the appellation's most carefully made small ranges, and one you have to seek out."
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Wines change with each vintage
For an accurate list of current-release wines and library bottlings from Assiduous Wines, please check the winery'Santa Cruz Mountains producers typically rotate vintages and offerings seasonally.
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