2010 Vermentino Hers Las Brisas Vineyard

Ryme has become a hot address in recent months among fans of idiosyncratic, unmanipulated wines and since production here is quite small, sleuthing is necessary to score these intriguing bottings. Beginning with the 2011 vintage, Megan and Ryan Glaab, who met while working at Torbreck in Australia, will introduce a line of wines called Verse, which Ryan says will be "more mainstream, at least as far as varieties go. They'll have our imprint but won't be as out there as what we want to keep doing with Ryme."

Ryan Glaab, who is the assistant winemaker at Wind Gap, works with his wife Megan on their own small-production label (begun in 2007). He told me that they're not afraid to go against conventional wisdom in their winemaking. Megan's feet are planted firmly in the wine and food world, by the way, as she is the sommelier at Michelin-starred Farmhouse Inn in Forestville, and her father is the chef and owner of the highly regarded Passionfish restaurant in Pacific Grove, which houses a superb wine cellar. Ryan told me that since their production is small they "can make wines with real, even off-beat character, which just isn't practical as you increase your scale of production. So we can do things like use all wild yeasts, or make a low-Brix cabernet with new oak, a ribolla gialla that macerates for four months on its skins, and an aglianico that's aged in barrel for almost three years."