Some wineries can claim to have “started it all.” Others can claim to set the standard today.

Williams Selyem is the undisputed Sonoma County icon that can do both.

They awakened the world to the glory of Golden State Pinot Noir, and year in and year out, they create some of the most sought-after Pinots made in the United States.

In 1979, Burt Williams, a publisher for the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, and Ed Selyem, an accountant and wine buyer in Forestville, took a few tons of grapes they had gotten for free and started to make wine together in a garage. Their first vintage under the Williams Selyem name came in 1984, and a year later they introduced the world to their very first single-vineyard Pinot, from the Rochioli Vineyard in Russian River Valley. That bottle bested more than 2000 others to win top red wine at the 1987 California State Fair. 

That same year, demand for Williams Selyem exceeded supply, a milestone that brought them permanently into the world of “cult” wine—long before that term had even been used to describe the class of high-quality, never-enough-to-go-around bottlings that thousands of devoted fans anticipate every season. 1987 also marked the debut of the Williams Selyem waitlist, which gave Pinot lovers a reliable—but unbearably slow—way to score these prized bottles. 

Today, no California Pinot Noir is held in higher regard than Williams Selyem. They’re among the most iconic wineries west of the Mayacamas Mountains, and their single-vineyard Pinots are hotly anticipated not just by their endless waiting list, but by collectors around the world.