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 Washington’s Whitman College in 1968. Following his time at Whitman, Steve served in the U.S. Army, which trained him as a cryptographer and deployed him to Vicenza in the Veneto region of Italy. While in Europe, Steve took advantage of the opportunity to travel to France, Germany and Spain. European wines were an epiphany for him, far surpassing the few American wines he had tasted. He quickly fell in love with wine, and the idea of winemaking. After the army, Steve abandoned the safe path of a career in medicine, and instead enrolled in the enology program at the UC Davis.

When most young winemakers were focusing on working with Bordeaux varieties and 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. During his 12 years at Hacienda, Steve honed his craft and earned renown as a gifted winemaker capable of making benchmark Chardonnays and age-worthy Pinot Noirs. During this period Steve also worked alongside his peers, including Richard Arrowood and Bob Sessions, to found the Sonoma Valley Vintners and Growers Alliance, where he served as president. Understanding the importance of regionally focused organizations, he also served as president for the Carneros Wine Alliance.

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. This style has played a pivotal role in helping to differentiate Sonoma County from other wine regions. Steve also dedicated himself to building relationships with the best growers throughout the region—relationships that have lasted for decades.

In 1997, Steve made another bold decision when he established of his own Wildcat Mountain Vineyard in the Petaluma Gap region on the borderlands between Carneros and the Sonoma Coast. Though Wildcat exists on the extreme edge of cool-climate viticulture, it has proven ideal for growing grapes that produce profound, complex and elegant wines. With Wildcat as one its cornerstones, in recent years, Steve has focused on further enhancing the MacRostie vineyard program. Because of the relationships he’s developed over his 40-year career, and the universal respect he has gained from his peers, Steve is able to source the most sought-after fruit for MacRostie, including grapes from legendary winegrowers like the Duttons, Sangiacomos, Martinellis, Bacigalupis, Kent Ritchie and Bill Price.

Today, Steve remains active, involved and essential to MacRostie’s success, and is in the winery regularly, where he works alongside MacRostie’s acclaimed 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. Thanks in part to his leadership, the last decade at MacRostie has been particularly impressive, underscoring Steve’s—and MacRostie’s—enduing commitment to excellence and innovation. Throughout this period, the MacRostie portfolio has gone from four single-vineyard wines to more than 20. Steve also fulfilled a lifelong dream when MacRostie opened its Estate House in the Russian River Valley, which includes the Thale’s Estate Vineyard (named after Steve’s wife). In collaboration with Heidi, Steve and the team unveiled MacRostie’s two pinnacle wines, The Loch and The Key, made the winery’s debut sparkling wine, and launched Clockwise, a winery that allows the team the opportunity to explore other grape varieties and styles.

Outside of MacRostie, Steve continues to champion Sonoma County, small wineries and the American wine industry that he has dedicated his life to. Steve is a current director at Wine Institute, where he serves as a regional director for Sonoma County, advocating on behalf of the region he loves. He also serves on the Finance and Administration Committee, where he helps to oversee the organization’s annual 15-million-dollar budget, and works as a liaison to the Technical Advisory Committee, contributing his acumen and experience to industry-wide initiatives such as trade regulations and labeling. Beyond the wine industry, Steve also gives back to his community. He is currently the board president of the non-profit Sonoma Community Center, which brings world-class art and educational programs to Sonoma County, along with an array of important community-centered events.

LEARN

The Story So Far

Through the Years

Steve MacRostie