Far Mountain

Far Mountain is based on the belief that some of the greatest potential for wine in California – and anywhere in the world – exists in remote pockets in the mountains of the Sonoma Valley. The growers the winery works with have taken decades of risks in both planting their vineyards and the farming choices they make today.  The winery’s work is to channel the drama of these surroundings into wines that dazzle with energy and stand out immediately. Wines that bring a sheer pleasure in their flavors and textures, as well as unfold slowly, with never ending detail and fascination. It is a specific vision, literally chiseled by the landscape.

Isolated. Awe-inspiring. Pulsing with beauty. If you have walked in the mountains of the Sonoma Valley, you know the feeling: warm sunlight filtering through groves of redwood and oak. The mellow golden fields of grass. The coolness in the breeze, an echo of the Pacific. The scents that you seem to absorb through your skin. The theater around you is so immense, yet you feel the scene is intimately yours. You linger because you don’t want to come down. You will not happen to drive by the vineyard sites Far Mountain works with and, in some cases, you will have trouble even finding them on a map. They are each tucked away and part of a greater environment, with both extreme beauty and extraordinary winegrowing characteristics that cause anyone who sets foot to shake his or her head in wonder. 

Over the last three decades, Mai Errazuriz and her husband Rodrigo Soto have worked for a number of leading wineries in North and South America.  Far Mountain is a name they chose in trying to describe the vineyard sites they work with and the greater settings in which those vineyards lie. There is a beautiful symmetry in these places, in that they are not only special sites for wine growing, but places they were physically drawn to because of their splendor.  It would be a dream to take everyone who tries their wines and bring them up, for example, to Bald Mountain. It is truly one of the beautiful places on this planet, a place that for three decades Mai and Rodrigo had passed within 3 miles of on a nearby road but never had an inkling existed. Those last 3 miles took a lifetime to travel, but from the first visit that place gave them the same sense of elation they’ve felt traveling around the world and coming upon other areas of extreme beauty. A hyper awareness of the physical present, of the sound of shoes on dirt and stones, of the direction of the wind.

In that sense, the name Far Mountain also represents a journey. It came about because of an almost far-fetched opportunity that Mai and Rodrigo dove into without second thought. And it’s a new journey now, seeking to make wines that bring that sense of wonder that truly great wine can achieve – a pure physical pleasure, and also a summation of place, experience, planning, and chance.

Explore The Vineyards Here.