Graton Ridge Cellars

Graton Ridge Cellars is one of the Sebastopol area's most genuinely community-rooted and family-farmed small estates. The Kazmer and Blaise families — neighbors on the Gravenstein Highway North corridor who spent years in the apple farming that historically defined this stretch of Western Sonoma County before Pinot Noir and Chardonnay supplanted the orchards — founded Graton Ridge in 2005 to produce estate wines from the Russian River Valley vineyard they transitioned from apple farming.

The Green Valley and Sebastopol corridor of the Russian River Valley is among the coolest and most fog-influenced in the entire appellation — the morning marine layer that rolls in from Bodega Bay most summer mornings keeps temperatures cool enough to extend the growing season dramatically and preserve the bright acidity and delicate aromatics that the finest Graton-area Pinot Noir and Chardonnay consistently show.

The weekend walk-in tasting with dogs welcome, families comfortable, picnic grounds available, and the genuine warmth of a family farming operation that still remembers when this land grew Gravenstein apples rather than Pinot Noir creates an experience that is as authentically Western Sonoma County as anything available in the Green Valley corridor.