The formative years for our small winery took place while we were part of a coterie of wine enthusiasts volunteering for two highly regarded wineries in the San Francisco Bay Area, Eno Wines and Harrington Wines. It was here that we started making a variety of wines under the guidance of these and other winemakers, and establishing relationships with specific vineyards that we liked. After learning how to work best with these vineyards over several vintages, we created one of the smallest wineries in California to produce small quantities of wines from vineyards we had come to love.
Coterie Cellars is owned and operated by its founders, Kyle and Shala Loudon. Kyle, our winemaker, brings to the winery a balance of creative and technical interests. Prior to Coterie Cellars, Kyle was fortunate to work with outstanding winemakers from other wineries. He has also worked on many large projects unrelated to wine, including the user interface for the original Apple iPod and software at Yahoo! that runs more than a billion times per day. For Kyle, the smallness of our winery and the personal nature of our wines offer an important and meaningful contrast to these large, technical projects. Shala, our accounts manager, brings a client focus from several years of working with Williams-Sonoma. Shala and Kyle both are responsible for the creative aspects of the winery.
Our letterpress evocative labels reflect the spirit behind how we make our wines. Letterpress is a printing method of special craftmanship and history that results in a pleasing tactile quality. Our labels feature a simple grape cluster as a testament that it's the fruit that will always shape and inspire our winemaking. The six grape berries in the cluster are a nod to the Gang of Six, the six-member team with whom we made some of our earliest wines.