New Winery in Town: Mica Cellars

I discovered a hidden treasure over the weekend, .

The 29-year-old winemaker, Mica Raas, is extremely knowledgeable for his young years, enthusiastic, friendly and dynamic regarding his approach to winemaking. Mica believes winemaking is an art and that wines should change from year to year and never be the result of a scientific formula. He calls his approach "micro-batch processing" because he works with the wine from the day the grapes are picked to the day the wine is bottled.

Mica was born and raised in the Santa Cruz Mountains and learned winemaking in Napa, Lodi and Sonoma. I appreciated his opinion that artisan wines should always be vineyard designates—never blending two separate vineyards—and that all wines should be "in balance" and "express a sense of place and varietal character." All the grapes he buys are from small and family-operated vineyards in the Monterey Bay region.

On Saturday, he had three exceptional reds for tasting: charbono, zinfandel and merlot (pronounced the French way, as it's made in the French style). The charbono was a new experience for me. It had a very deep, almost-black color with intense fruit apparent in the flavor. Zinfandel is my absolute favorite red wine and Paso Robles zins have always been the standards in my opinion. The grapes for Mica's Zin came from Zayante Vineyards and was like eating plums and raspberries sprinkled with cloves and cinnamon. The merlot grapes also came from Zayante vineyards, and the only thing that would have made the tasting complete would have been a small piece of chocolate to go with the wine's long finish.

Even though the small tasting room in still under construction, we came away with a full case of wine for our home cellar. Roudon-Smith and Armitage share the same tasting space, and I predict they will be busting out of this location soon. We are looking forward to upcoming wine appreciation and education classes, too. A trip to Mica Cellars is well-worth your time and effort in finding it.

I'm going to do my part to support this new and unique business (for Watsonville) and hope it is the catalyst for the makeover this community needs. Please go, taste and buy the wines. You won't be sorry.