Ceritas Wines
Fractured sandstone on the West Sonoma Coast against shale in the Santa Cruz Mountains, tasted side by side in a working winery in downtown Healdsburg. Ninety-five dollars, by appointment only.1
Why go
The first vintage was 2005, and the winery's own account is that its people spend more time in the vineyards than the cellar.1 The tastings are led by a member of the winemaking team, not a host, and they are built around the contrast between the coastal regions the house works.1 The wines go out through a mailing list and to a few restaurants, in three releases a year, so a booked table is the straightforward way to drink them.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the standard tasting at $95, which moves through the West Sonoma Coast and the Santa Cruz Mountains in one sitting.1
- Order: the library tasting at $195 if you want the vertical, back across nearly twenty years.1
- Avoid: walking in or bringing nine people. Neither works, and the winery says so on its own page.1
Good to know
- Wednesday to Sunday, ninety minutes, arrive within ten minutes of your slot.1
- Your card holds the booking and is charged only on a cancellation inside 48 hours.1
- This is a working winery, not a satellite tasting room, which is unusual for a downtown Healdsburg address.1
Verdict
could-visit — Ceritas works fractured sandstone ridges on the West Sonoma Coast and shale in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the $95 tasting is built to put one against the other in the same sitting. It has made wine since 2005 and sells almost all of it through a mailing list, so booking a table here is the practical route to the bottles. The $195 library flight runs back across nearly two decades. Held here because the winery is the only voice on the record: no winemaker is named on the page I read and I could not find a critic who has written about the wine.