The truth is that it's impossible for us to be very objective about the Porter-Bass vineyard. Phoebe grew up there and knows every slope and hidden pathway like the back of her hand, and we got married there on a beautiful afternoon in the summer of 2011.

That said, let us tell you about the Porter-Bass vineyard.

Just outside the town of Forestville, about eight miles inland from the Pacific, Porter-Bass sits between ridge lines as though it's the seat of a saddle. When fog rolls in from the ocean, as it does every season, rather than eveloping the vineyard, it spills gently over the tops of the trees. The grapes spend their days basking in sunshine and the nights cooling off under ocean breezes.

In 2005, we made the first Ceritas from Porter-Bass chardonnay, which came from vines that Phoebe's mom Sue has been farming since 1980. Our sense of the fruit that grows in the vineyard is that it has everything wine grapes could want. On the one hand, it carries the acid and mineral structure, the salinity, that great cool climate chardonnay exhibits, and on the other hand, because of how beautiful the weather is in that little pocket canyon, our wines from Porter-Bass always seem the tiniest bit opulent, and full of seductively lush smells and flavors.

We can't think of a vineyard we'd rather call home.