The name is a question. The vineyard is the answer.

Hypothesis sits beside Educated Guess, and it is a different bottle. Mark Albrecht started Roots Run Deep in 2005 after years of building wine programs in retail, and the first wine was an Educated Guess Napa Cabernet. He put fermentation formulas from Cornell, UC Davis, and Virginia Tech on that label, because he wanted the science and the art on the same glass. The first submission was turned down, on the argument that the formulas looked like a map for making wine at home. The name stayed. A vineyard decision is the best call you can make from what you know, from what you have already seen, and sometimes from instinct.

He sold his house in the Oakland Hills to fund that first vintage, and friends helped. Barry Gnekow made the wines through the 2016 vintage. In 2017 Macario Montoya took the cellar, after a decade as assistant winemaker at Piña in Rutherford. Hypothesis began as a Napa Cabernet whose skins went through flash détente before fermentation, a heat-and-vacuum step Mark called interventionist. The line later grew to include Pinot Noir. This bottle is that later idea, a Roberts Road Pinot, and not the Cabernet the process was built for.

The front of a Hypothesis bottle stays nearly quiet. The vineyard name is what you turn the bottle to read. If the front label is a wiped chalkboard, what do you want the back label to prove?

Fog until midday

Roberts Road sits at the western base of Sonoma Mountain, at the far northern edge of the Petaluma Gap. Angelo Sangiacomo stopped to talk with Eddie Grossi, who farmed organically nearby and asked if the family wanted a parcel that had just come up. The ground had been hay and corn, next to where the Crane family grew Crane melons, and it was outside the area the family was already farming. They worried the fruit might not ripen. A neighbor with a tiny vineyard told them it would, and that it would take time.

They bought it and planted it in 1999, to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Soil tests asked for little amendment, and a well could be drilled. Other growers followed, Gap's Crown among them, and the Petaluma Gap earned its name. The AVA was recognized in 2017. Sangiacomo prints both Sonoma Coast and Petaluma Gap for the ranch. This listing carries Sonoma Coast.

The season is long, slow, and even. Fog stays on the rows until midday, and the vineyard is among the last they pick. Copeland Creek borders the north. The soil is well-drained silty gravel. A creek fans one way and then the other, so the south drains toward San Pablo Bay and the north toward the Russian River. Sangiacomo calls the wines from this fruit rich and delicate, with a supple mouthfeel. Fourteen clone and rootstock combinations are in the ground. The ranch is 130 planted acres, Certified Sustainable, and more than twenty wineries buy the fruit. This bottle is one vineyard-designated Pinot Noir from that ground.

Montoya, and a process that belongs to another bottle

Macario Montoya has made the Roots Run Deep wines since 2017. Before that he spent ten years at Piña in Rutherford. He oversees the cellar and the grower relationships. On this Pinot, the work is the site. Roberts Road gives a long hang time, fog for nearly half the day, and fruit the Sangiacomo family has farmed since the ranch was planted.

Flash détente is how the Hypothesis line began, on a Napa Cabernet. Skins were heated, then cooled under vacuum, before fermentation. Mark had that wine tested at Wine Xray in Napa and talked about an opened bottle holding its line for days. He said the step was useful in a mold year like 2011. The label then added several Pinot Noirs and a Malbec. The process stays with the Cabernet that started it. This page is the Roberts Road Pinot.

The cellar for the house now sits at Sunrise Ranch in Jamieson Canyon, on property the Laird family owns. Mark started at Napa Wine Company and later moved the operation there. Jamieson Canyon takes the cooling air off San Pablo Bay, the same influence that keeps Carneros from running hot. The Pinot in this bottle was grown west of that canyon, at Roberts Road, and brought in.

A craftsman house on First Street

In 2019 Roots Run Deep bought the craftsman house at 1607 First Street, built in 1901, a few blocks west of downtown Napa. They opened the tasting salon in spring 2020. The flights take their names from the school the brands already use, The Undergrad and The Graduate. Walking in is meant to feel like walking into a house, which is what the building was.

Educated Guess is still the wine most people already know, and the blue capsule carries that name. Hypothesis, Truth be Told, Bound + Determined, The Scholar, The Graduate, The Valedictorian, and The Ph.D. are the other labels in the house. The smaller labels live mainly in the tasting room and in select Northern California distribution. This bottle is the Roberts Road Pinot.

The orange mark on the wooden wall is the Educated Guess signature, a large e with a small g. The barrel room behind the glass still reads the house name. The Pinot does not need the Napa Cabernet story to earn the pour. It needs the fog at Roberts Road, and a glass.

A roast bird, or salmon with lemon

A cool-climate Pinot wants a plate with some richness and a bright edge. The fog at Roberts Road keeps the fruit lively, and the two plates below give it something to hold.