Far Mountain Fission Moon Mountain District Cabernet Sauvignon 2020
Far Mountain Fission Moon Mountain District Cabernet Sauvignon
Region: Sonoma Valley, California, USA
Vintage: 2020
Bottle size: 75cl
Grape: Cabernet Sauvignon
ABV: 13.5%
This wine displays intense and ripe black fruits along with earthy and mineral characters, and a seamless, silky flow through the mid-palate. A sappy concentration and powerful, yet refined tannins remain on the structured finish. The name Fission was ultimately chosen to reference the textural and mineral characteristics the volcanic soils bring to the wine.
Located in Moon Mountain District AVA in the Sonoma Valley mountains, the vineyard has fifty-year-old head-pruned Cabernet Sauvignon vines, exceptional by California standards. They are also planted on St. George rootstock, which is now difficult to find. Because the vines have never been irrigated, they continue to produce fruit long past the age that most vines in California need replanting. They adapt to the influences of the weather and their deep root systems (20-40 feet down) bring layers of complexity to the fruit development. The bedrock is volcanic in origin, containing basalt along with fractured and decomposed granite. The elevation of the south-east facing vineyard means that it takes a full two weeks to pick from bottom to top.
The Cabernet Sauvignon is handled extremely gently, more similarly to the way many producers handle Pinot Noir. The clusters were destemmed with the aim of keeping whole berries, and then transferred to open top fermenters. Limited punchdowns and pumpovers were carried out depending on the stage of fermentation. The wine was settled and macerated, without any forced extraction, to accentuate the intense fruit characters and velvety plushness of the grape tannins. It was then racked to oak barrels, 27% of which were new and the remaining between one and four-years-old, to be aged for one year.
Far Mountain was founded by Chilean winemaker Rodrigo Soto and his wife, Mai Errazuriz, in 2018. Having spent decades working for leading wineries across the Americas, the couple established this project, believing that the remote pockets of the Sonoma Valley mountains had the potential to make some of California’s most exciting wines. With this philosophy in mind, they sought out exceptional vineyards and launched their first release, the 2019 vintage, to international acclaim. In 2025, Antonio Galloni (Vinous.com) named Far Mountain as his ‘Emerging Producer to Watch’, describing them as “one of the most exciting new projects in California” who “craft gorgeous, old-school wines of place”.