History
The Demuths sold most of the fruit and kept small lots for a label of their own, with Adrian Fog, Anthill Farms, Skewis and Whitethorn among the early buyers. Their son Eric Demuth helped plant the vineyard and now bottles a Chardonnay from it under Demuth Kemos, the Russian River Valley partnership he runs with Peter Kemos. Peter Knez bought the property in the late 2000s, around the time he took neighbouring Cerise, and the record is muddled: 2007, 2008 and 2011 all appear in print, and the order of the two purchases is reported both ways, though Knez's first Anderson Valley Pinot Noir, from the 2009 vintage, already blended both sites. Anthony Filiberti, a co-founder of Anthill Farms, was Knez's inaugural winemaker and converted the farming to organic and biodynamic practice. Ryan McAllister took over from him in 2015, by which time 2014 had proved to be the label's last vintage. Kosta Browne bought the estate from Peter and Heidi Knez in 2016, 61 vine acres across Cerise, Demuth and Knez plus some 300 acres of woodland, in its first vineyard purchase outside Sonoma County, and Kosta Browne itself passed to Duckhorn in 2018 and to Butterfly Equity in December 2024.
The Site
Fifteen acres lie on an exposed ridge between roughly 1,400 and 1,700 feet, the top of the 700 to 1,700 foot spread the combined Cerise property covers and among the highest vineyard ground in Mendocino County. Anthill Farms, buying from the 1,400 to 1,600 foot parcels, called the soils similar to nearby Abbey Harris but less rocky, and no detailed profile is published. Boonville is the warm end of the valley, and the altitude is what argues otherwise, bringing afternoon wind, cold nights and a marginal ripening window. Yields have run under a ton to the acre in some years, with Lioco reporting fruit below 20 hectolitres per hectare.
Vines and Blocks
The vineyard held seven acres of Pinot Noir and eight of Chardonnay at the 2016 sale, against the eight acres recorded in the family's own era. The Pinot Noir is Pommard and Wadenswil across two sections, with terraced rows of Wadenswil on the upper ground and a Pommard block on a shelf lower down the slope. The Chardonnay is old Wente from the 1982 planting, on the AXR-1 rootstock that phylloxera has since found. Very little Chardonnay is planted this high anywhere in the county, which makes it the more unusual half of the vineyard.
The Wines
Knez bottled both varieties as designates through 2014. Lioco made the Chardonnay across a long run of vintages and a Pinot Noir in 2018, while Anthill Farms made a Demuth Pinot Noir from at least 2011 through 2016, and neither wine appears in those wineries' current listings. Kosta Browne has not released a Demuth designate, folding the fruit instead into its Anderson Valley Pinot Noir alongside Cerise and Knez. Lioco's was the most austere and mineral-driven Chardonnay in its range, and Chablis was the reference its buyers reached for.