Cinnabar Winery, Gilroy

About the winery

Cinnabar Winery was founded in 1983 by Tom Mudd¹. Its 1998 page on Web Winery described the original estate: a 30-acre vineyard, dry-farmed and planted in 1984, 1,650 feet up in the Santa Cruz Mountains above Saratoga, with the Mount Eden clones of Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay⁷. Mudd, who owned the winery with his wife, Melissa Frank, had been a senior research engineer at SRI International and had grown grapes and made wine for ten years at a one-acre vineyard in Woodside⁷. He named it for cinnabar, the red mercury ore that medieval alchemists hoped would turn base metals into gold; his own alchemy, the page said, was turning rainwater into wine⁷. There was no tasting room then, only open houses a few times a year⁷.

Tom Mudd died in 2007⁵, and the estate changed hands that year; Cinnabar then moved its tasting room to downtown Saratoga¹. A 2019 South Valley article said the original winery building had become home to Domaine Eden⁵. In 2019 Ron Mosley took ownership¹. Mudd had hired him in June 1983 to clear and plant the vineyard, and he helped make the first barrels of Cabernet in 1986²; he and his wife, Lynne, also took over running the tasting room⁵.

Cinnabar celebrated the opening of a tasting room in Gilroy, in a 12-acre vineyard on Dryden Avenue, in August 2022^6,3, and closed the Saratoga room on March 31, 2025³. The wines now come from growers in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Paso Robles, the Santa Lucia Highlands, the Red Hills of Lake County and Alexander Valley¹. Mercury Rising, a name Cinnabar already used in 2003⁸, is now a family of wines led by a red blend⁴. The winemaker, Alejandro Aldama, was first hired by Tom Mudd at 18 to work in the vineyards². Cinnabar still makes Santa Cruz Mountains Chardonnay and Pinot Noir⁴, but its only tasting room is now in Gilroy, in the Santa Clara Valley³.

Known for

Mercury Rising red blend
Santa Cruz Mountains Chardonnay
Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot Noir

From the archives

Pages Cinnabar Winery published on the original Web Winery, from December 1998. Visiting details in them are long out of date.

Cinnabar's logo on Web Winery, 1999.

On Web Winery by December 1998
The estate above Saratoga, 1998. Cinnabar's first page on Web Winery introduced Tom Mudd, a former SRI research engineer, and his wife Melissa Frank, and their 30-acre dry-farmed vineyard 1,650 feet up above Saratoga, planted in 1984 with the Mount Eden clones of Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. It explained the alchemy behind the name and said there was no tasting room, only a few open houses a year. Wayback copy
On Web Winery by April 2003
A tale of two wine labels, 2003. A 2003 Cinnabar news item introduced a new label for the estate and single-vineyard wines, designed by Mauricio Arias of Palo Alto, and explained its symbols: the zodiac, the four elements and the seven heavenly bodies, around a C for Cinnabar. The Central Coast wines and Mercury Rising kept the older cream label with the blue stripe. Wayback copy
On Web Winery by May 2003
Cinnabar's history page, 2003. By May 2003 Cinnabar's history page described the estate vineyards 1,650 feet above Silicon Valley, planted in 1984, a winery designed to handle the grapes gently, and caves dug later into the hillside to keep the barrels cool. It still said there was no tasting room, only occasional open houses. Wayback copy

Nearby in Santa Clara Valley

Clos LaChance Winery San MartinChanged hands
Pinder Winery CampbellNot confirmed