Isabella Morano, our multi-hyphenate natural winemaker from Sonoma, is learning to talk to birds. “Not all birds,” she cautions, “just corvids.” She’s got a whistle and everything, and if you call her on the phone to ask about her winemaking, she’s going to make you listen to 3-7 minutes of crow calls. She reports that a lot of crows have been talking back, but she’s not sure what they are saying… yet. For anyone else, this would be surprising, but it’s the sort of thing you grow to accept from Isabella. Of course she talks to birds, and of course she’s good at it. There’s perhaps no way to soften this part - Isabella is both weirdly optimistic and incredibly talented, and for her, the future looks bright.

Talent, especially for young winemakers, is often a polite way of saying “unlimited resources,” so it’s important to note that’s not what we’re talking about here. Isabella might have a ton of grit and scrappiness, but materially, she’s a few vintages away from it all being easy. Instead, what she possesses is a combination of raw ability, training (via Martha Stoumen, Elisabetta Foradori, Domaine Mosse and Bedrock, among others) and really good instincts. As a terrifically small fish out there, Isabella has to compete hard for organic vineyard sources, and what she manages to cobble together is invariably limited but exquisite. As such, there’s never a lot of wine made and, frankly, for the most part it makes sense for her to sell as much as possible on the West Coast, but what does make it out here is always shockingly good - wines that taste of California sunshine, open and textured and flowing – think conversation pit style feng shui and religious-experience tomato salad and you’re close.

Last vintage she received a ton of praise for her sauvignon blancs, which sold out before we even really had a chance to explain why they were so good or even show more than a few bottles. Be warned, we got a little bit more this vintage, but not nearly enough, so please speak asap. All the attention on her whites left us unprepared for her absolute monster of a red this vintage, which stopped the office in our tracks and which, absolutely, is on our short list of best merlots of the last 5 years. If she were ten years older and had more cowboy hats, we’d call her current release a love letters to New California, but as it stands, we’re more inclined to just say that Isa wines is channeling the next big wave of west coast natural wine and we’re just glad we got in on the ground floor.