The wine is full of violet and blueberry aromas, with fruit and wet earth on the palate. But the key word for this wine is "roundness." The texture is silky smooth and lovely, with no roughness or heaviness at all, making it a pleasant taste. The long finish has enough sparkle to end the wine on a beautiful note. This wine is made from Tannat grapes from the Alder Springs vineyard in the town of Laytonville, Mendocino County. The Tannat plots are relatively young, but are planted on steep, south-facing, fine sandstone slopes at an altitude of 700m. The distance from the sea and the high altitude combine to create a cool growing area, but also allow enough hang time for the Tannat to ripen fully. The grapes were harvested on October 4, 2019, and spontaneously fermented in stainless steel tanks and pumped over for 12 days. They were aged in barriques, and malolactic fermentation was spontaneously induced. The wine is racked once before bottling, and a very small amount of sulfite is used twice, after the first fermentation and before bottling. Unfiltered and unfined. "Cruse Wine Co." and "Ultramarine" are the California brands that are currently attracting the most attention from around the world. Michael Cruse, the owner and winemaker of these two brands, majored in biochemistry at UC Berkley, and after graduating, he learned winemaking from a scientific perspective at SutterHome and Starmont. He has never received any formal winemaking education, and taught himself wine science through trial and error and on-site experience, and founded Cruse Wine Co. and Ultramarine in 2013. Just three years later, he was named Winemaker of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle, and was in the spotlight as a maverick in the California wine industry. The "Cruse Wine Co." brand produces wines with the pure fruitiness and transparency that are unique to California, and a strong structure, while the "Ultramarine" brand produces fragrant, handmade sparkling wines from a single vineyard and a single vintage, inspired by Champagne's Recoltant Manipulant. Even star-ranked restaurants in the United States only allocate a few bottles per year, and many sommeliers and wine buyers are desperate to get their hands on this popular wine. As if symbolizing California wine in an age of diversity, they create complex, unique, and fresh wines without being bound by traditional styles or grape varieties. They actively use word-of-mouth and social media as marketing tools, and are making a leap into the world as an up-and-coming winemaker who will lead the next generation.