Mauritson Family Winery

Mauritson Family Winery is one of Sonoma County's most historically deep and geologically dramatic wine estates. The Mauritson family's connection to this specific corner of Sonoma County goes back six generations to 1868, when the family first began growing grapes in the Dry Creek Valley. Great-great-great-grandfather S.P. Hallengren first planted vines on the Rockpile valley floor in 1884, shipping wine back to Sweden — establishing what would become one of California's most historically significant and geologically extraordinary vineyard locations.

The Army Corps of Engineers acquired most of the family's Rockpile land in the 1960s to create Lake Sonoma — forcing the family to sell at significant loss but leaving 700 ridgetop acres where the Healdsburg-Rogers Creek Fault runs directly through the vineyard. This geological drama — an active earthquake fault bisecting the vineyard — gives Rockpile Zinfandel a structural intensity and mineral character unlike anything produced from valley floor or benchland terrain.

Clay Mauritson returned from college in the mid-1990s, honed his winemaking at Kenwood, Taft Street, and Dry Creek Vineyards, and released the inaugural Mauritson Dry Creek Zinfandel in 1998. Today the three-AVA program — single-vineyard releases from Dry Creek, Alexander, and Rockpile — with a Wine Library seated tasting including cheese and charcuterie represents one of Sonoma County's most compelling and historically grounded cellar experiences.