Imbibe 75 Person to Watch: Alice Anderson

Rhône-style wines made on California’s Central Coast have attracted a long lineage of iconoclast winemakers, from Bonny Doon’s Randall Grahm to Qupé’s Bob Lindquist. Alice Anderson, a Cal Poly–trained winemaker, is among the latest to forge her own path with the label Âmevive.

After working harvest around the world, including in the Northern Rhône for two years, Anderson set up shop in the Central Coast, taking over the lease of the storied Ibarra-Young vineyard, the oldest in the region, from Lindquist. While the vineyard has been organic since 1993, she’s introduced no-till farming and working with animals to encourage biodiversity. “If there were no tall grasses, the jackrabbits wouldn’t be there [or] the butterflies and the insects and the lizards. It’s all a very integrated system, and that’s what we want,” she says. (The flora and fauna even make their way onto her labels, which are hand-painted by her mom.)

In the footsteps of the winemakers before her, she puts her own spin on what Cali-Rhône can be. Working with whole clusters and picking early means her wines tend to be lower in alcohol and have what she describes as an “energetic freshness.”

As for future plans, she hopes to grow her production—but only slightly—and continue to experiment with different cuvées that don’t always have to tie in the Rhône. On deck is a red sparkling wine made from Mondeuse, commonly found in the Savoie region of France. Her version is aged one year in a barrel with no sulfur. “It’s super fun and a totally different expression,” she says.

Click here to read more about some of 2023’s other Imbibe 75 People and Places to Watch.