It may have been a bit of romanticism at the start, but Coterie's founders, Shala and Kyle Loudon, were hooked the first day they worked at a small winery. Shala, whose family has a history with wine in Italy, and Kyle, a lifelong foodie, envisioned a future inspired by their pasts. Plenty of points test your resolve when you create a winery from scratch, but the spiritual sway of the land and wine are strong in California. These feelings run deep.

Shala and Kyle believe in a little of the unconventional. They believe in making wine primarily by hand, without the homogenization imposed by too much technology. They offer the wines of Coterie primarily through a members list, directly from the winery, and at a small number of fine restaurants, rather than through wide distribution. They take special pride in receiving accolades that are volunteered, rather than soliciting scores, reviews, and awards. Furthermore, they don’t engage much in publicity; they are honored that the winery has a special clientele.

Coterie has been a part of unique groups and remarkable places, such as Outstanding in the Field, whose breathtaking farm dinners have included their wines for over a decade, and landmark restaurants, such as Oliveto, with its impressive journey advancing farm-to-table dining. Other beautiful turns along a road less traveled include a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program with Spade and Plow Organics and experiences created with exceptional artisans, such as Cowgirl Creamery, for winery events.

The word "coterie" itself embodies a community of shared interests and tastes. The winery's letterpress-evocative labels convey the care and craftsmanship behind this ethos. Coterie's location and winery are a further reflection of this spirit, and are other examples of believing in the unconventional. The winery is nestled in a cozy neighborhood near downtown San Jose, where it transformed an old warehouse into a beautiful place for wine.

Few products are more natural than wine. At its essence, wine is just grapes that have undergone the wonderfully natural transformation of fermentation. The winemaking of Coterie is carried out as close to this ideal as possible. This is non-interventional winemaking. Given that the evolution from berry to bottle and beyond is largely in the hands of nature, every wine is a leap of faith.

Care and attention are essential in both the winery and the vineyard. In the vineyard, much of the work and all harvesting is done by hand, with thoughtful viticulture practices and little mechanization. In the winery, it's as much about the things left undone. For white wines, the gentle touch and complexity offered by whole-cluster pressing is preferred over destemming. Chilling during cold soaks for red wines and settling for white wines are handled with a little dry ice rather than industrial coolers, and the small sizes of vessels used in fermentations regulate their temperatures naturally. Small vessels also allow punchdowns by hand as red wines ferment, instead of the mechanical pumpovers that big tanks require. After fermentation, grape berries, seeds, and stems are primarily screened out of the wine rather than the wine being pressed from them; only the last 20% or so of the volume overall requires any pressing at all. Settling before bottling is carried out just by gravity and time.

Coterie limits how much each wine is moved around, and minimizes or eliminates fining, filtering, and cold stabilization, as well as the addition of sulfur dioxide (sulfites). How can you tell? Some wines may exhibit a faint cloudiness, a slightly less polished yet more nuanced character, or a bit of crystalline sediment ("wine diamonds") at the bottom of a bottle. Some liken these slight imperfections in wine to the more natural qualities of a live performance or analog recording in music over a digitally perfected master. Coterie leans into this more natural approach whenever it can.