Mike Lucia is no newcomer to the Sonoma wine scene. He has been laying tracks in the world of wine since he first landed in Healdsburg as a teenager back in ‘92 and started rubbing shoulders with local winemakers during after-school restaurant gigs. Sometime in the late ‘90s, Mike fell in love with the wines of Burgundy and sought to find a similarly nuanced, terroir-driven experience at home.

In 2014 Mike started a side project producing the kind of wines he loved to drink and always wanted to make......and so Rootdown was born. The Rootdown label refers to the grassroots of winemaking and the downward influence of the soil on wine, particularly in organic winemaking. Rootdown focuses on varietal specific wines from single vineyards that lead with earth and texture, rather than only fruit.

For all wines, Mike harvests his fruit to lead with earth and texture, rather than only fruit. Stylistically, these wines have low alcohol, high acid and more delicate, brighter color. His style remains very decidedly hands-off, allowing the grapes and specific sites to speak for themselves. He ferments the wines with native yeasts, no new oak, and sulfur only in amounts equal to what is found naturally on the vine. Mike’s technical prowess as a winemaker is finely tuned, but he usually prefers to let curiosity inform what happens with his Rootdown wines. He is constantly having fun “making decisions that he shouldn’t make,” and always playing with “What if?”