Ten divided by nine runs 1.1111 and never lands, a decimal that keeps reaching for the next digit forever. Michael Mente chose it as a name on purpose. It is the idea that a wine, like a life, is never quite finished, only carried a little further each vintage. Five miles east of Lompoc, on sandy hills that catch the Sta. Rita Hills fog from almost every direction, that restless idea has a home: 21 acres of pinot noir and chardonnay, a gravity-fed cellar lit like a nightclub, and a team that would rather take its time than fake it.

The fashion mogul who fell for a Lompoc hillside

Michael Mente built Revolve, the online fashion engine he launched in 2003 that helped invent the influencer storefront and went public in 2019. Wine got under his skin long before the company did. He still remembers an early glass of Dominus on a work trip in his twenties, then a hard-won bottle of Kosta Browne around 2006 that, as he tells it, got him hooked. He had been visiting Santa Barbara wine country for years, and one of the first places he ever tasted was Melville.

In 2021 he bought the former Hilliard Bruce estate, a modernist property that had sat on the market for three years, two doors down from that same Melville tasting room. He did not come alone. His brother Stephen Lou and childhood friend Charn Premyodhin came in with him, and together they took UC Davis winemaking classes, several taught by a Bordeaux-trained winemaker named Frederick Ammons whose Napa resume runs through Rudd and Harlan. They kept in touch, then brought him on as consulting winemaker. On the recommendation of the celebrated somm-turned-vigneron Rajat Parr, Ammons enlisted Alice Anderson of Amevive to run the day-to-day cellar. The team is blunt about being newcomers with no interest in faking it.

Why these sandy hills make the wine

The Sta. Rita Hills is one of the coolest corners of California wine, and it owes that to a geography most regions would envy. The mountains here run east to west, an unusual transverse alignment that opens the valley like a funnel to the Pacific. Cold marine air and morning fog pour straight inland off the ocean, then burn back by afternoon, so the vines bake at midday and shiver by dusk. That daily swing is the secret. It lets the grapes ripen their fruit while holding onto the bright acid that makes these wines taste alive.

The 10 Ninths vineyard sits on the north side of Highway 246, its sandy blocks rolling and facing nearly every direction, originally planted in 2004. Sand drains hard and keeps yields honest, which is exactly what you want for pinot noir and chardonnay with cut and tension. Anderson and Ammons have spent their first years pulling the farming back toward quality, after a stretch when the site had been pushed for quantity while it sat on the market. The reward is already in the glass: chardonnays that taste of chalk and citrus, pinots with a savory, chaparral edge that calls to mind the celebrated Domaine de la Cote bottlings made just down the road.

The wines, and the patience behind them

The first vintage was 2021, made from the vines Mente inherited. The 2023s are where the ambition shows: taut, acid-driven chardonnay reflective of the Sta. Rita Hills at its best, and pinot noir that leans savory and earthy rather than sweet and showy. Because there is no pressure to turn a fast profit, the team can experiment. They have planted a little syrah, built a sparkling program that surprised even them, and make a tiny rose that never leaves the family and friends circle.

Frederick Ammons puts the whole philosophy in a single line: “We want to do something that is an honest reflection of the place.” That patience is the point. There was honesty from the start, he says, that good wine on this hillside takes time, and for once the team has both the will and the means to give it that time.

What to pour it with

Start with the chardonnay, the chalky, high-acid kind 10 Ninths is chasing. Acid is a knife for richness, so this is the wine for butter-poached lobster, a roast chicken with crisp skin, or Dungeness crab with drawn butter. The wine slices the fat, resets your palate, and makes you reach for the next bite. Skip the heavily sweet glazes and the big chili heat, since neither gives the wine anything to grab and both will flatten it.

The pinot noir is built for the table, not the trophy shelf. Its savory, chaparral tone and bright acid love anything earthy: seared duck breast with cherry, a mushroom risotto, or the lamb the family raises right there on the property. The bridge is real, not romantic, because pinot noir and mushrooms share earthy, savory compounds that read as a single flavor once you put them together. The tannins here are gentle, so the wine wants fat and protein but does not need a heavy steak. A tray of duck-fat roasted potatoes does more for it than a ribeye.

10 Ninths: common questions