From the wild mind of winemaker Evan Lewandowski.

Classic California with a natural twist, from profound vineyards.

I wonder if I've actually been subconsciously striving to get as far away from the starting point as I possibly can. For me, that starting point was GIGANTIC, oaky, extracted wines with little sense of place and almost zero nuance.

Once out of viticulture school and on the production side of things, I couldn't distance myself from these types of wines fast enough. The natural wine movement was a beacon on a hill, a bright and promising ray of hope that things didn't have to be this way. There was a whole universe of grapes and ground and thoughtful humans earnestly seeking to express those things through healthy, holistic practices both vineyard and cellar. This would be the way for me.

Dirty Gold is a homecoming, in a way. A return to what was so incredibly attractive to me at the outset, what drew me into this world. "Gold," what the early pioneers chased after so fervently to bring them this far west, and 'Dirty,' representing what it would all eventually become: depraved boom towns of corruption and deceit; land grabbing (ahem, stealing) and lawlessness. With each of the DirtyGold wines, we are hoping to take back these grapes that have become so unfashionable, such 'dirty words,' along our quest for obscurity and 'new-ness' and 'anything but the old gard-ness.' This is a range of cuvees that is unabashedly the story of modern California wine. We are investigating incredible vineyards, with the hope of showing you just what mainstream California grape varieties can do. A new old pursuit.