Making great wines begins with finding great vineyards; unique and lovingly tended sites with something special to express in the glass. At MacRostie, we work with upwards of 25 Chardonnay vineyards and close to 20 Pinot Noir sites each vintage, but we are always on the lookout for exciting new terroirs as we explore the diversity of Sonoma County Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. One such discovery is the Huichica (Hoo-cheee-kah) Hills Vineyard in the Carneros region of Sonoma County. 

We began working with Huichica Hills about five years back, and in the years since, it has played an important role in our Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir and has even contributed to our pinnacle Pinot Noir, The Loch. In 2022, after evaluating our lots of Pinot Noir from Huichica Hills, Winemaker Heidi Bridenhagen and her team were so impressed that they made the decision to elevate Huichica Hills to a single-vineyard wine, our 2022 MacRostie Huichica Hills Vineyard Carneros Pinot Noir.

One of the factors that drew Heidi to the 380-acre Huichica Hills Vineyard is its unique location straddling the border between the cooler Sonoma side of Carneros and the warmer Napa County side. Our prized block of Huichica Hills, which features Dijon Clone 828 Pinot Noir vines planted in 2012, is entirely on the Sonoma County side. The block features well-draining volcanic clay loam soil and is located on steep undulating hillsides. Planted in an ideal east-west orientation that allows cooling winds to funnel through the block, it yields grapes with thick skins, amazing color, and classic Carneros notes of earth and spice. While Carneros is know for producing lush, red fruited Pinot Noirs, the climate of Huichica Hills pushes the flavors to a darker fruit profile of blue fruits and purple plum with big, lush tannins. The site also naturally limits yields, with small, tight clusters producing intense, concentrated flavors.

At Huichica Hills, Heidi and our Grower Relations Manager & Viticulturist Taylor Abudi, work closely with the same farming company that guides two other acclaimed sites we work with, Mirabelle and Wohler Road vineyards, to implement pruning, leafing, and shoot thinning as needed. Because the vineyard produces a naturally bold expression of Pinot Noir, Heidi aged the wine in a bit more new French oak (38%) to frame the wine and add intriguing layers of cocoa and coffee.

If you wish to try our debut Huichica Hills Pinot Noir we invite you to visit our tasting room in Healdsburg, the MacRostie Estate House, where we are currently pouring the wine as part of our Signature Experience. Featuring single-vineyard Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs, our Signature Tasting can be enhanced with a selection of curated food pairings, including Caviar & Truffle Chips or an Elevated Charcuterie Plate (vegetarian option available).

The wine was also be included in our May 2025 Summit and Pinnacle MacRostie Wine Club shipments. At MacRostie, we offer three great wine club options, our Pinnacle, Summit and Highlands clubs, with each one offering a Pinot, Chardonnay or Mixed option. Our customizable clubs also include a wealth of fantastic benefits such as access to limited production wines like Huichica Hills, complimentary tastings, exclusive member pricing, complimentary flat-rate shipping and much more. If you are a fan of world-class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, we hope that you will consider joining our vibrant community of wine lovers.

The history of winegrowing in Sonoma County goes back more than 200 years, with grapes planted in the region as early as 1812. By the 1920s, driven by European immigrants who brought their viticultural traditions with them, there were more than 250 wineries in Sonoma County. While that number dropped to less than 50 wineries by the end of Prohibition, the region had already established itself as a New World mecca for wine.

In the decades that followed, different parts of Sonoma County earned acclaim for specific grape varietals, and efforts emerged to define different regions within Sonoma County. Building on the region’s reputation for excellence, the Sonoma Coast earned official status as an American Viticulture Area (also known as an AVA or appellation) in 1987. The Sonoma Coast AVA is one of California’s most diverse wine regions. Much like the Napa Valley AVA, which includes 16 sub-AVAs, the Sonoma Coast encompasses nine unique sub-AVAs: Chalk Hill, Fort Ross-Seaview, Green Valley of Russian River Valley, Los Carneros, Northern Sonoma, Sonoma Valley, the Russian River Valley, which is home to our Estate House and our Thale’s Vineyard, and the Petaluma Gap, where we established our Nightwing Estate Vineyard.

Spanning almost half a million acres of land, the Sonoma Coast extends from the border of Mendocino County in the north to San Pablo Bay in the south, and from the windswept Pacific Coast to the rolling hills of Sonoma County’s southeastern dairy lands. While the AVA offers an abundance of microclimates, geology, and soil types, in general, the best Sonoma Coast wines benefit from wind and fog off the Pacific, and the fact that the region consistently receives almost twice the annual rainfall of AVAs that are further inland. These factors generally ensure a long, temperate growing season, which allows for slow, even ripening and acid retention, both of which contribute to the extraordinary quality of our Sonoma Coast wines.

Today, many of North America’s highest-scoring and most celebrated Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays are grown on the Sonoma Coast, with Sonoma County being named the “Wine Region of the Year” by Wine Enthusiast in 2019, and wines from the Sonoma Coast are consistently featured on Wine Spectator’s annual list of the “World’s Top 100 Wines,” including the “2011 Wine of the Year.” The acclaim of the Sonoma Coast AVA has only grown over the past two decades during the Pinot Noir boom that has reshaped the map of California winegrowing. During this time, many wineries like MacRostie that focus on cool-climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, as well as winegrowers, have headed ever further west and north to plant new vineyards using the best modern plant material and state-of-the-art viticultural techniques.

Because of its large size and diversity, the Sonoma Coast can produce wines in a range of styles. For Chardonnays from the coolest regions like Green Valley, this can mean sleek, acid-driven wines with zesty citrus flavors and sophisticated minerality. In warmer vineyards, the flavor spectrum can change from citrus to stone fruit to tropical. Pinot Noir can follow a similar spectrum of ripeness from tart red berry and forest floor flavors to more opulent blue and black fruit flavors at warmer sites.

At our Sonoma Winery, Winemaker Heidi Bridenhagen embraces the diversity of the Sonoma Coast vineyards we partner with to create vibrant, beautifully balanced wines with profound aromas and complex, layered flavors. This is certainly true for our 2022 MacRostie Sonoma Coast Chardonnay, which recently earned 93 points from both Wine Enthusiast and The Tasting Panel. Blended using grapes from theSangiacomo and Ricci vineyards in Carneros, and sites farmed by the Dutton and Martinelli families in the Russian River Valley, it combines notes of lemon and stone fruit from Carneros with the acid-driven tension, green apple, and tropical fruit of the Russian River Valley. For the 2022 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, Heidi focused on her favorite sub-AVAs for Pinot, notably the Russian River Valley, Carneros, and the Petaluma Gap. From the earth and spice notes of Carneros to the lush fruit of the Russian River Valley to the power and complexity of the Petaluma Gap, each vineyard and region brings something distinctive and compelling to the final wine.

We also explore many single-vineyard expressions of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from the Sonoma Coast at sites like Walala Vineyard and Wildcat Mountain, as well as from acclaimed sub-AVAs like the Russian River Valley (Kent Ritchie Vineyard, Thale’s, Mirabelle, Klopp Ranch), the Petaluma Gap (Nightwing Vineyard, Gap’s Crown) and Los Carneros (Sangiacomo Vineyard).

While the Sonoma Coast is globally renowned for its wines, it has also earned acclaim as one of the world’s premier destinations for wine tourism and relaxed, down-to-earth hospitality. Sonoma Coast wine country has become a must-visit destination by combining world-class wines, Michelin-starred restaurants, and beautiful hotels with a warm, unpretentious attitude. It is also home to numerous tasting rooms and not-to-be-missed annual wine events like Winter Wineland (January), Taste of Sonoma (June), the Sonoma County Wine Auction (September), and Pinot on the River and Healdsburg Crush (October).

Whatever your taste is in wine, food, and outdoor fun, the Sonoma Coast has it all!