Osa Major Wines is a one-woman enterprise - from trucking grapes to selling bottles and everything in between. Winemaker and owner Emily Fernwood spent the years after college traveling and working harvest gigs the world over, from California and Oregon to Australia and New Zealand, until founding Osa Major Wines in 2020.

Winemaker's notes: Gold in the Hills is a nod to California's history and the vineyard on which it grew, and also to the landscape of the Sierra Foothills. In keeping with this theme, you'll find notes of honeycomb, warm hay, chamomile, and a hint of tarragon. Semillon is the "other" white Bordeauxgrape - if you've never had it before, it's likely you've had its more famous and more aromatic counterpart, Sauvignon Blanc. I came to love Semillon while living and working in Australia, where it is generally racy and picked very early, but it can be found in countless iterations from bright and lean to dessert style.

Farming: Chatom Vineyard is one of those places that can only be described as an "energy vortex". Decomposed granite and limestone make up a majority of the soil, and large chunks of quartz litter the ground. Nestled in a bowl-shaped valley, the property has three defunct goldmines, and if you look carefully you can see some flashes of gold dust in the soil as well. Now, they produce a different kind of gold. Water in these parts has been scarce in recent years, and these vines are dry-farmed during the latter part of the season.

Vinification: These vines were hand-picked and allowed 12 hours of skin contact, after which they were destemmed and pressed into stainless steel casks. After a spontaneous primary fermentation, part of the wine was transferred into a neutral oak barrel. It remained in these barrels with fine lees until bottling, undergoing a spontaneous malolactic fermentation in late fall. Bottled unfined/unfiltered April 25, 2022.