Charlie Gilmore spent roughly twenty years working in California cellars before he decided that the wines he most wanted to drink were the ones almost nobody was making. In 2018 he founded Cormorant Cellars in Healdsburg, Sonoma County, with a single conviction carried over from all those vintages: simplicity makes the best wines.
Backstory
Gilmore launched Cormorant in 2018 with a Sauvignon Blanc. He widened the range in 2021 with Chardonnay and a Grenache Blanc and Marsanne blend, and bottled his first red in February 2023. The project remains small and personal, built around what he learned over two decades of commercial winemaking.
Vineyards & Farming
The wines are entirely vineyard sourced. Gilmore works only with growers who farm without synthetic pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, drawing fruit from organic-certified sites. He treats the vineyard as the place where the wine is really made, leaving as little as possible to correct in the cellar.
Winemaking
Gilmore's method is deliberately spare. He ages the Sauvignon Blanc in a mix of stainless steel drums and older, neutral oak, with traditional sur lie aging, while the other whites rest only in older or neutral barrels. He uses seven-year-old French oak so the wood adds texture rather than flavor. There is no pumping, no freezing, and no mechanical manipulation, and he does not filter any of his wines.
The Wines
The lineup centers on Old World styled California whites: a sur lie Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and a Grenache Blanc and Marsanne blend, joined since 2023 by a red. They are unfined, unfiltered, and made to show their fruit and their site rather than the hand of the winemaker.
