Brutocao Cellars

Winemaking traditions often begin around the table. Brutocao's roots go back two generations to a dinner table in Venice, Italy. When the Brutocao family came to the New World and married into the Bliss family of farmers, it was only natural that they would combine their passions and become grape-growers and winemakers.
Located in Mendocino County, California, Brutocao Cellars is the perfect blend of Italian heritage and rural agricultural lifestyle. The winery has 475 acres of prime grape-growing land was purchased by Irv Bliss in the 1940s. When the winery opened in 1991, they adopted the Lion of St. Mark as its symbol. Modeled after a lion at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, this powerful icon was chosen to represent both family tradition and quality.

Brutocao Cellars offers a wide variety of wines including Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Port, and other red and white varietals. The red wines are unrefined and unfiltered, allowing them to retain all their flavor components and complexity. The white wines are barrel fermented and sur lie-aged to enhance their fruit flavors. “Sur lie” literally means “on the lees.” Wine aged in this fashion leaves the lees (the coarse sediment of fermentation) in place for a few months to add to the complexity of the wine. These taste-tempting Brutocao wines have won numerous awards and compare favorably to the finest wines in all of Mendocino County.

Just a short drive from San Francisco, Mendocino County is part of the world-famous North Coast appellation. This famed American Viticultural Area also includes Napa, Sonoma and Lake Counties. It features both the Mediterranean climate of California and the cool, wet climate of the Pacific Northwest, making it the perfect area for growing high quality wine grapes. The first commercial winery in the region was founded in the 1850s, and the number of wineries in Mendocino County increases every year.

Mendocino County vineyards depend on the cooling winds from the Pacific Ocean that bring plentiful rain to the vineyards during the winter time. They also cool the vineyards at night, offering much-needed temperature variation. The result is very ripe fruit with good acidity—the hallmark of any great wine grape. Brutocao Cellars makes only small lots of wine from select grapes, a process that further intensifies the flavor.