Novak & Mason Cellars
Novak & Mason Cellars
Anne and Rachel both have backgrounds that have lent themselves to winemaking in serendipitous ways.
Anne studied human behavior and now applies her love of science to her love of winemaking. She focuses on logistics and operations for Novak & Mason Cellars, and in addition to bringing order to chaos, she provides the drive and vision that boils the what-ifs and maybes into action. When not enjoying a bottle of Pinot Noir, she can be found wielding spreadsheets, wrangling businesses, and spending time with her family. Her favorite wines are bold, well-structured, savory, and elevated. Her favorite part of winemaking is orchestrating the movement of wine, whether during racking or in the joy of a well-organized bottling line.
Rachel studied Classics and Ancient History, and now works in the spheres of open source and online community, and has embraced winemaking as a creative outlet away from the world of technology and terrible people on the internet.
She is endlessly fascinated by the art and science of wine; winemaking at its best is directed chaos and the sublime rush of adapting to the unexpected. Her favorite wines are fresh, bold, playful, and distinctive. Her favorite part of winemaking is crush. Rachel handles brand design for Novak & Mason Cellars when she’s not obsessing over brix, pH, and the cellar.
We aim to create wines that above all else honor the virtue in the fruit. We believe in using gentle heritage techniques in order to highlight the qualities inherent to that harvest.
In everything, we will strive to find the virtue in the grapes as we receive them. Our winemaking process focuses on how to best accent and reflect the skill of the grower and the distinctiveness of the terroir. All our decisions in the cellar - in what we make, in what we add, in how we age it- are in service of illuminating what is best about the wine. We aim to make wines that dance on the tongue and linger in memory, each wine a microcosm of the year that produced it.
We aim to source from small, independent growers who have a deep understanding of the interplay between varietal and terroir, and whose decisions on everything from trellising to soil management reflect a commitment to producing high quality and distinctive fruit.
We utilize both natural and conventional fermentation. In keeping with the principle of gentleness and in the style of many heritage wines, we start with slow and wild natural fermentations, and then finish up with carefully selected conventional fermentation. The wild yeast add complexity and the slower pace of fermentation allows for a gentler extraction while on the skins. Finishing up with conventional yeast allows us to ensure that the wine finishes fermentation cleanly so that the fruit will not become obscured by cellar-induced faults.