Dry Stack Vineyard was purchased by the Young family in 1999 and planted to Syrah, Grenache, Sauvignon Blanc and Roussanne in 2001 as part of the first wave of "new" Syrah plantings in Bennett Valley. Although now it seems so obvious, at the time it was a bold move - particularly the Grenache and the Roussanne. We were told by a couple of experts that the Grenache would "not ripen until Christmas". For the first several years of production the fruit from Dry Stack Vineyards was sold to wineries such as Pax and DuMOL. Now that we are making wine, we continue to devote most of our grape production to our winery clients. To see a map of our vineyard click here.

The key to our success with Syrah is Bennett Valley's climate. Although we are just west of the Valley of the Moon and just east of the 101 Freeway, we are as cool as the famous micro-climates of Russian River Valley and Green Valley. We harvest our whites in late September and our Syrah in late October, usually just before the first storm of the season. This long growing season allows us to get our fruit completely ripe without the brix soaring into the stratosphere.

Although everyone will tell you that their vineyard is planted on well-drained, rocky soils, most of them are exaggerating. Our soils are heavy, poorly drained but still very rocky soils or volcanic origin. There are places where the rocks are so thick that they comprise 70% to 80% of the soil. But in other places there is nothing but clay - gray black, heavy, expansive clays. The rock floats in the clay in differing amounts, like marshmallows in Jell-0 salad.

We removed 4,000 yards of rock (that is a pile the size of a large house) from our vineyard when we prepared it for planting. We used as much of the rock as we could to build dry stack rock walls around the property and around our house, giving the vineyard the name "Dry Stack". The rest we ground up and put on the vineyard roads. Counter to what most people think, these clays are actually quite devigorating. They are virtually impregnable below 2 feet, and dry out to a substance akin to concrete sometime in June or July. After that, the vines struggle to draw what they need.

Dry Stack has 11 different irrigation blocks with several very different aspects, and 4 different clones of Syrah along with Grenache, Petite Sirah and Roussanne. It provides us with a great palette or "spice rack" from which we can craft our wines.

We farm as softly and as sustainably as possible, always conscious of the impact to our farm, our family (who lives on the farm), our neighbors and our community. Although we have become disillusioned with the rules for organic farming, we are still using many organic practices.