To make his wine, Avi Deixler had to win an argument with a county government. He fought the Marin County Planning Commission to secure the right to run the sole registered winery in the North Marin Wine District, working out of a barn on a coastal dairy farm. The wine that comes out of that barn is built on a single rule: only grapes go in.
Backstory
Avi Deixler launched Absentee Winery in 2016 in Point Reyes, California. He had trained extensively beforehand, working at wineries across California, Oregon, Australia, and France, and brought that experience back to West Marin. What began as a tiny project on the Marin coast has since grown, with Deixler planning the next chapter at a new facility in Mendocino County, the source of much of his fruit.
The Region
Absentee straddles two of Northern California's cooler coastal zones. The original base sits in the North Marin Wine District near Point Reyes, an area with almost no commercial winemaking history, which is part of why Deixler had to fight for his permit. Most of the fruit, though, is drawn north to Mendocino County, an inland-to-coastal stretch known for old, dry-farmed vineyards and a long tradition of organic growing.
Vineyards & Farming
Deixler sources exclusively from organic, dry-farmed sites in Mendocino and Marin counties. A central source is Poor Ranch in Hopland, in southern Mendocino County, planted on sandy soils with vines ranging from 10 to 40 years old and farmed organically since the ranch was established in the 1970s. In the field the vines are treated only with elemental sulfur and nothing else, a discipline that carries straight through to the cellar.
Winemaking
Every wine ferments spontaneously with native yeast, with grapes as the only ingredient. Deixler is known for his work with barrels, and that skill is what lets him bottle clean, stable wines with little to no added sulfites, a difficult thing to do well without the usual cellar safety nets. The wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered, capturing the full expression of the fruit and its site.
The Wines
The range centers on honest, drinkable bottlings such as Red, a Mendocino red blend built largely from Poor Ranch fruit, alongside cuvees like Flaws. These are transparent, terroir-driven wines that show the cool-climate fruit and old vines behind them rather than any cellar trickery, and they have earned Absentee a devoted following in the natural-wine world.
