The name Ashanta carries two meanings at once. It fuses the surnames Ashton and Basanta, and it echoes asante, the Swahili word for thank you, a nod to the African ancestors of co-founder Chenoa Ashton-Lewis. Both meanings sit behind a project that turned family loss into one of California's most uncompromising natural-wine labels.
Backstory
Chenoa Ashton-Lewis, a fifth-generation Oakland native and third-generation winemaker, and her partner Will Basanta, a cinematographer, began experimenting in October 2019 with unsold grapes from Chenoa's family vineyard on Sonoma Mountain. That organic site, planted by her grandparents in the early 1970s and roughly 50 years old, had been devastated by the 2017 Nuns Fire, which destroyed about 80 percent of the vines and her grandparents' home. The couple made their first commercial vintage in 2020 at the historic Coturri Winery and now base the project between Sebastopol and Los Angeles.
Vineyards & Farming
Ashanta works with family-operated vineyards farmed organically or biodynamically across Sonoma, Mendocino, the Sierra Foothills, the Central Coast, and San Diego County. Sources include a 35-year-old Chardonnay block at Grebnikoff, Claus Vineyard in Mendocino, and Suma Kaw in the Sierra Foothills. The couple also forages wild fruit from wilderness and urban spaces, folding it into their co-ferments.
Winemaking
Ashanta follows a strict zero:zero standard, often described as the gold standard of natural winemaking: no added yeast, no tartaric acid, no chemicals, and no sulfur. Fruit is hand-harvested and ferments spontaneously with indigenous yeast, with close attention paid to healthy soil biology in the vineyards that feed the cellar. The wines age in neutral oak, typically 7 to 14 months, and are bottled unfined and unfiltered with zero added sulfites.
The Wines
The portfolio runs to roughly a dozen cuvees spanning skin-contact whites, field blends, roses, petillant naturels, and California reds. It includes a Zinfandel called Zazen, an Encantando Riesling, a Chardonnay named Calypso, a Tempranillo called Minotaure, a Merlot-Chardonnay blend named Mawu, the Carignan-Syrah-Mourvedre rose Resist Rosado, and experimental bottlings such as the apple-and-Carignan co-ferment Sidra and the elderberry pet-nat Brutal. The through-line is experimentation grounded in transparency.
