Husband and wife winemaking team Michael and Anne Dashe traded the lush vineyard landscape for an urban winery just south of San Francisco, with a focus on producting exceptional, single-vineyard wines that reflect the unique soil, climate and regional characteristics of the vineyards they work with. They have been partnering with many of their growers for the past 20 years, working together to limit yields, eliminate the use of chimicals, and making careful harvesting decisions. Only natural yeast

Rather than using a commercial strain of yeast - many winemakers prefer to let the yeasts that are naturally occuring on the grapes when they come into the winery to start the fermentation process. This lends to the idea of a "sense of place" or terroir

The combined natural aspects of a vineyard, such as climate, soil, sunlight, and water, that can have a major impact on the overall character and quality of a wine. While no direct English translation exists for this French term, it has long been adopted throughout the wine community.

of a wine, given that any particular native yeast is unique to that particular region / mircroclimate / vineyard.

is used in the fermentation process and the wines are rarely fined

Fining is a technique for clarifying a wine in which an inert material that has an affinity for certain particulates is stirred into the wine. The fining agent falls through the wine, attracting and binding with the unwnated material as it settles to the bottom. Both the fining agent and sediment are then sparated from the wine by racking. While some fining agents include gelatin and egg white, increasingly more winemakers (especially those working organically) will either not fine their wines at all or use non-animal fining agents such as bentonite.

or filtered

Filtering involves straining the wine through a barrier with very fine openings in order to trap any particulates over a certain size. Wines that are unfiltered may contain sediment in the bottle and be slightly cloudy in appearance. Some winemakers prefer this, as it can lead to greater depth of flavor, complexity, and texture.

- which further lends to the sense of terroir in these wines. organic

Maintaining agricultural systems without the use of feed or fertilizer of plant or animal origin, and without employment of chemically formulated fertilizers, growth stimulants, antibiotics, or pesticides

farming.