Saracina Vineyards

Fruit, bottle, and a clear line through each vineyard

The choice is to keep the wine bright and textured; Alex MacGregor, head winemaker at Saracina Vineyards in Hopland, works from that discipline. His station here sits inside Mendocino County, with Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Zinfandel, Malbec and Sauvignon Blanc among the varieties moving through the cellar and toward the tasting room. MacGregor’s route to this bench was not a straight one. He studied at McGill University, California State University, Fresno, and Santa Rosa Junior College, then entered the Toronto restaurant scene as a busboy before returning to it as a certified sommelier and wine buyer. He worked under Héctor Vergara in a Toronto restaurant wine program, became an enologist in Dry Creek Valley in 1989, and moved from cellar rat to winemaker at Everett Ridge in Sonoma’s Dry Creek and Russian River valleys. At Saracina, he is both inaugural winemaker and head winemaker, a role he has held from 2001 to the present. He also owns and makes the wines at Trinafour Cellars, founded in 2005, where the house style is direct in its aim: wines that leave space for vineyard shape, texture, and acidity to register without being forced.

A cellar vocabulary of texture and restraint

Saracina’s program is built around still red, still white, and rosé wines from Mendocino County, with a sustainable production philosophy and a medium-scale cellar. The public language around the place points to lush wines, yet MacGregor’s own signature runs toward definition rather than weight for its own sake. His known bottlings at Trinafour give the clearest view of his hand: Petite Sirah from a single, dry-farmed, organic vineyard; Carignane from a 1950s planting, aged with no new oak and given a few days on top of Petite skins for enhancement; Dry Muscat, Rosso Misto, Sémillon, and French Colombard in a small catalog tied to vineyard voice. That same practical emphasis carries into Saracina, where his role is to shape wines that read clearly from vineyard to bottle.

Caves, willows, and the quiet of the tasting room

The place gives the wine room to settle. Saracina is home to the first wine caves in Mendocino County, set into landscaped grounds with olive trees, weeping willows, and mountain caves. The tasting room is open, sunny, and spacious, with quiet views across vines and trees rather than a crowded cellar-door rush. Cave tastings and flight tastings draw the visitor toward the vineyard and the underground spaces, while the broader farm work includes on-site olive oil and honey production. It reads as a working estate before it reads as hospitality: rustic in its materials, elegant in its restraint, intimate because the room stays close to the land around it. In Hopland, the counter, the tasting room, the caves, and the olive trees all sit inside the same frame.