Cru Podcast | Stories From The People Behind Wine

Mike and Cory Waller are brothers raised running around the hills of Hollister, California. After years of work, travel, and discovery, they find themselves crafting wines a mile away from each other in the Cienega Valley with Mike the winemaker of Calera Wines and Cory the winemaker for Eden Rift Vineyards. Cory grew up exploring the forests, canyons and river beds of the Cienega Valley. To this day, he knows the back roads of this remote appellation like few others. He counts local farmers, ranchers and fisherman in nearby Monterey Bay among his cadre of friends and colleagues. To describe him as non-interventionist winemaker would be an overstatement, for Cory possesses a strong point-of-view. While vine health is crucial, Cory favors the fruit of vines that struggle profoundly to produce smaller, yet clearly delineated yields. In the cellar, neutral vessels, native yeasts and varying degrees of stem inclusion, play a strong role in a wine’s elévage, as he prefers to transmit the voice of a site, over a he