History
Webster Marquez, Anthony Filiberti and David Low met working at Williams Selyem and founded Anthill Farms in 2004, making eight and a half barrels, roughly 200 cases, in their first vintage. Abbey-Harris, which the label hyphenates after its two owners, was among the sites they began with, and a 2005 from it was already in front of reviewers, so the designate belongs to the start of the label rather than to a later expansion. Anthill now makes between 1,800 and 2,000 cases a year across eight single-vineyard Pinot Noirs and a short list of other wines, and this is one of the smallest lots in it. Neither the planting date nor the clonal material has been published, unsurprising for a two-acre parcel with no label of its own.
The Site
The vineyard occupies a rocky, south-facing slope in the hills above Boonville at 900 to 1,100 feet. Boonville is the warm end of Anderson Valley, where the floor ripens earlier than the deep end toward Navarro, and height above that floor is what gives this site its cold nights and its later pick. Published acreage has shifted: an earlier account gives 1.5 acres at 1,100 feet against the two acres and wider elevation band published now. The soils are the Wolfey-Bearwallow complex, shallow, low in fertility and fast-draining over fractured sandstone, among the most common hillside soils in the valley and the same series found under vineyards up and down it. Within these two acres the ground changes visibly: roughly half is pale sandy soil shot through with pink quartz, while the other half carries more organic matter and large shale outcroppings, which is more variation than most parcels this size contain.
Vines and Blocks
The planting is Pinot Noir and nothing else. No blocks are named, and none would mean much at this size, though the quartz half and the shale half are the division that matters in practice. Anthill farms the site itself, and its distributor lists the winery as practicing biodynamic while at least one retail sheet calls the vineyard certified organic, the kind of discrepancy that follows small leased parcels with no public page of their own.
The Wines
Anthill Farms is the only producer. Recent vintages follow a consistent method: about half whole clusters, a three-week native-yeast fermentation with daily punchdowns, twelve months in French oak with around 30 percent new, then bottling unfined and unfiltered at modest strength, 13.5 percent in 2019. The winery's own reading of the site is savory and spice-driven, with firmer tannin than its other Anderson Valley fruit, while earlier accounts noted a particular high-toned red-fruit lift and credited it to the quartz ground. Whether that comes from the rock or from the elevation is not something anyone has tested. Abbey-Harris barrels also go into Anthill's Anderson Valley appellation Pinot Noir, a selection that draws on Leal in the hills above Boonville and on Baker Ranch and Forste toward Philo. Distributor listings carry the vineyard designate through the 2021 vintage, and most of what is made reaches buyers through the winery's mailing list.