The estate
Eighty-four acres of the wrong dirt.
1974 — today
Every neighbour told my father the soil here was too thin to ripen fruit. He planted Cabernet anyway. Thin soil, it turns out, was the whole point.
Marielle Solène — Winemaker & second generation
A short history of the estate
In the cellar
The person who farms it is the person who makes it.
Marielle Solène came back to the estate in 2004 after eight vintages in the Northern Rhône, and immediately halved the new oak. She still walks all twelve blocks most mornings, and she still calls the picks herself — usually a week earlier than anyone expects.
The cellar team is five people. Everyone farms, everyone punches down, and everyone tastes every lot before a single blend is proposed. The Solstice Reserve is chosen blind, by all of them, on the longest day of the year.
“I would rather make a wine somebody argues with than one nobody remembers.” Marielle Solène
Farming
Certified organic, dry-farmed, and stubborn about it.
No synthetics, anywhere
Certified organic since 2019, after a three-year transition. Cover crops between every row and sheep grazing the winter vineyard instead of a mower.
Dry-farmed hillside
Irrigation was shut off on the terraces in 2011. Yields fell by a third and never came back, which is precisely the trade we were hoping for.
Solar and gravity
The cellar runs on roof solar and moves wine by gravity rather than pumps. Less electricity, gentler handling, and considerably less noise at harvest.
The same twelve people
Our vineyard crew has been with the estate an average of fourteen years. They are paid year-round, not by the ton, and several of them farm the block their parents planted.
Terroir
Fractured shale, marine fog, forty degrees of swing.
Cold Pacific air pushes up the valley most nights and burns off by ten. That swing — warm afternoons, genuinely cold nights — is what lets us pick at thirteen and a half percent and still have ripe tannin.
740ft
Highest block
38°F
Diurnal swing
1918
Oldest vines planted
2t/ac
Average yield
The Solène Club
First refusal on everything we make.
Three shipments a year, free freight, and the only reliable way to get the Solstice Reserve. No minimum term — leave whenever you like.
The Bench
Six bottles
$180 per shipment
- Six bottles, three times a year
- 15% off all further orders
- Complimentary tasting for two
- Free shipping, always
The Terrace
Twelve bottles
$340 per shipment
- Twelve bottles, three times a year
- 20% off all further orders
- Tasting for four, plus a guest visit
- Early access to the Reserve allocation
The Library
Reserve only
$620 per year
- Solstice Reserve, three bottles
- One library vintage each spring
- Cellar vertical for two, annually
- Invitation to the harvest lunch