Joanna and Sean were introduced at Robert Sinskey Vineyards in Napa while sowing the earth with manure-stuffed cow horns to make fertilizer—a common practice in biodynamic winemaking. After their early spell together at Sinskey, the duo split to further pursue their craft at two excellent producers noted for similarly thoughtful farming and winemaking practices: Sean at Rhys Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Joanna at Kutch Wines on the Sonoma Coast. And excitingly, a few years later, their winemaking ambitions coalesced in the idyllic hamlet of Glen Ellen, California.

Joanna and Sean cemented their formal partnership with their inaugural “Model Farm” in Alta Heights in 2013, where they began farming two acres of syrah by hand: a self-anointed “masterclass of humility” that was “just as hard as it sounds.” In 2021, after years of experimentation and acclimatization, the duo turned their attention to create (some) economies of scale, and, et voila, the inception of Alta Heights.

As its name alludes, the vineyards for the project are all situated at 1,000 ft elevation or above, which already presents a departure from the favored sandy soil valley floors that most winemakers seek in Northern California. The sites where Alta Heights cultivates its vines are dominated by thin, rocky soils. In lieu of buying into California’s most popular AVAs, Joanna and Sean look for untapped potential in the land, and Sean espouses that “AVAs are just gerrymandered marketing gimmicks. The terroir of the mountains supersedes whatever names they put on the land.”