Artevino by Maple Creek Winery

The label and the cellar in one hand

A label begins before the cork is pulled, and Tom Rodrigues, winemaker at Artevino by Maple Creek Winery in Yorkville, treats that surface as part of the same discipline as the wine inside. His path has never separated image from cellar work. From 1978, Rodrigues worked as a wine label designer; by 1980, he was a designer and Production Manager at Skywalker Ranch Studio, where precision had to survive repetition. Since 2001, he has served as founder, owner and winemaker of Maple Creek Winery, and in 2014 he became artist and vintner, owner of Artevino Winery and 180-acre Maple Creek Ranch. The result is a practice with few handoffs. The person thinking through the bottle’s visual language also carries the wine program, the ranch, and the tasting room conversation. His own line is plain enough to hold the method: “My approach to all things in life is to take on challenge – to invest the time to learn the craft.” Here, that challenge sits across land, cellar, paper and glass.

Yorkville Highlands fruit, kept close

The work is framed by the Yorkville Highlands AVA and a boutique, low-production scale. The stated philosophy is sustainable, with organic sourcing tags attached to the place, and the range stays within still red and still white wines: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Symphony and Flora. Those varieties give Rodrigues a broad bench without turning the program into excess. Artevino and Far Niente sit among his signature wines. The method, as far as the house makes visible, is one of continuity between growing, making, naming and presenting.

A quiet tasting room above the vines

The tasting room keeps the scale of the work in view. It is rustic rather than polished flat, a quiet room with Rodrigues’s artwork present, a garden outside, wisteria, picnic tables and the hillside close enough to remain part of the encounter. The setting matters because the wines are not presented as detached objects. They arrive with the maker nearby, in a place where vineyard, orchard, label and glass stay within the same field of attention. The mood is laid-back and welcoming, but the room does not need noise to create warmth. The counter, the garden and the artwork do enough.

One practice, several materials

Rodrigues received Artist of the Year at the Mendocino County Wine Song event in 2018, a recognition that fits the shape of the work without needing to define it. The more durable thread is his insistence on learning the craft across forms. Follow the next bottle here through the surface as well as the cellar; the label, the Yorkville Highlands fruit and Tom Rodrigues belong to the same hand.