About - MacRostie Winery & Vineyards

Our Story

Through the Years

Over the past three decades, MacRostie Winery and Vineyards has established itself as one of the Sonoma Coast’s defining wineries, and a leader in a bright, balanced and age-worthy style of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Today, MacRostie is guided by Sonoma County visionary and winery founder Steve MacRostie, and talented winemaker Heidi Bridenhagen, who together are making the finest wines in the winery’s storied history.

Using grapes farmed by legendary winegrowing families including the Duttons, Sangiacomos, Martinellis and Bacigalupis, and from Steve’s own Wildcat Mountain Vineyard, MacRostie’s Sonoma Coast wines have established themselves as benchmarks, offering a rare intersection between labor-intensive small-lot winemaking, fair pricing and the complexity that can only be achieved by working with the finest vineyards.

Though founded in 1987, the seeds for MacRostie Winery and Vineyards go back to 1974—to the early days of Sonoma County winemaking—when Steve began his career at Hacienda Winery. At a time when most California winemakers were fixated on Bordeaux varieties and Napa Valley, Steve and a handful of other pioneers took a different path, embracing the fog-shrouded vineyards of Sonoma County and their untapped potential for producing some of the finest Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in the world. Steve quickly gained renown as a winemaker capable of making exceptional Burgundian-variety wines. He also began to develop his own style, favoring crispness, complexity and vineyard character, as opposed to overt opulence.

In 1987, Steve established MacRostie. To make his earliest wines, he reached out to growers he knew and respected—leaders of Sonoma County winegrowing, like the Sangiacomo family. MacRostie’s wines were soon widely hailed for their unique balance of cool-climate structure and vibrant fruit. In 1992, years before the modern Pinot Noir boom, MacRostie added Pinot Noir to its portfolio, and quickly developed a devoted following for the pure and elegant style of these wines.

Several years later, inspired by a desire to cultivate his own great piece of land, Steve discovered an amazing mountainside ranch in the Petaluma Gap region on the borderlands of the Sonoma Coast. Planted to Steve’s specifications, this windswept site has become Wildcat Mountain Vineyard, and the cornerstone of the winery’s vineyard program. At the same time, in its drive to represent the entirety of the Sonoma Coast, MacRostie has continued to explore ever-farther west, to sites like Dutton Ranch and Goldrock Ridge, just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean. To capture the rich expressiveness of the entire appellation, MacRostie works with more than 30 Chardonnay vineyards and over 15 Pinot Noir sites—a remarkable level of diversity for a small winery.

In 2015, MacRostie unveiled its new state-of-the-art Pinot-focused winery and MacRostie Estate House on Westside Road in the Russian River Valley, which is also the home to Thale’s Vineyard, named after Steve’s wife. “I have always wanted a home for MacRostie that expresses who we are as a winery and what we believe in as clearly as our wines do,” says Steve. “Our new home in the Russian River Valley is a culmination of everything we have learned over our first quarter century, and a statement about who we plan to be over the next 25 years.”

Founder

Steve MacRostie

In 1974, Steve MacRostie made his first Chardonnay and Pinot Noir using grapes from areas that would today include the Sonoma Coast. Back then, there were only about 40 small wineries in Sonoma County. Now there are hundreds. Where Steve helped lead—both geographically and stylistically—others have followed, making the Sonoma Coast one of the world’s great regions for making Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. With his relaxed charm, philosophical mind, adventurous spirit and encyclopedic knowledge of Sonoma County viticulture and winemaking, Steve is recognized as one of the region’s great pioneers, strongest advocates and most respected winemakers.

A native Californian, Steve was raised in Sacramento. In the process of preparing for medical school, he earned a degree in biology from Whitman College in 1968. Following college, Steve served in the U.S. Army as a cryptographer deployed to the Veneto region of Italy. While traveling throughout Italy, France, Germany and Spain, Steve found European wines to be an epiphany. He quickly fell in love with wine, and the idea of winemaking, and after the army, he abandoned the safe idea of a career in medicine, and enrolled in the enology program at UC Davis.

When most young winemakers were focusing on establishing careers in Napa Valley, Steve once again took the road less traveled, and in 1974, he became the inaugural winemaker for Sonoma County’s Hacienda Winery. There, Steve earned renown as a gifted winemaker capable of making benchmark Chardonnays and age-worthy Pinot Noirs. In 1987, with the support of his wife Thale, Steve founded MacRostie Winery and Vineyards. At MacRostie, Steve began to pioneer a fresh, elegant style that showed its roots in the cool vineyards of Sonoma County. To achieve this, Steve continued building relationships with the best growers throughout the region—relationships that have lasted for decades.

Today, Steve guides MacRostie’s acclaimed vineyard program, working closely with the growers and overseeing the farming of Wildcat Mountain and Thale’s Vineyard. Steve is also in the winery almost daily, where he works alongside MacRostie’s talented winemaker, Heidi Bridenhagen. Together, they challenge and inspire each other, and as a result, Steve and Heidi are making the best wines in MacRostie’s history, while also staying at the forefront of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir viticulture and winemaking. As a director of the California Wine Institute, Steve continues to be a respected advocate for Sonoma County and the entire wine industry. He lives with his wife, Thale, in Sonoma Valley.

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The Story So Far

Through the Years

Steve MacRostie