Michael Cruse was born in San Francisco and has never lived outside the bay area. He studied biochemistry at UC Berkeley, and it wasn’t until after college that he had the idea of a career in wine. He applied and was admitted to the UC Davis master’s program in enology and viticulture. To prepare, he got a lab job at Sutter Home, where he found that the cellar work was his favorite part of the job. He never made it to Davis. After a year at Sutter Home, he was hired at Starmont where he became associate winemaker. In 2008, he found a book at the library, Jules Weinmann’s “Manuel du Travail des Vins Mousseux,” published in 1899. That’s how he learned to make sparkling wine and how his first project, Ultramarine, which has now reached cult status, was born. In 2013, Cruse left Starmont and leased a warehouse in Petaluma where he launched Cruse Wine Co., with the vision of celebrating vibrant wines made from often forgotten-about varieties and focusing on “unabashadly Californian” wines that were also fresh, pleasurable, and serious. He focuses sites within the Napa Valley and Sonoma County and finds his inspiration in varieties such as Valdiguie, Tannant, Carignan and St Laurent. He sources his fruit from some of the premier single vineyard sites in the state.