Through 2008 all of our fruit will come from our home ranch, Dry Stack Vineyard in Bennett Valley. Starting in 2008, 2009 and 2010 three new vineyards will come into production. All these vineyards were planted to our specifications including spacing, nursery stock, variety and clone and are farmed to our specifications.
Dry Stack Vineyard
Our "Home" ranch in Benentt Valley
Greywacke Vineyard
Greywacke is our vineyard in Russian River with spectacular views and great fractured franciscan soils.
SteinerRanch
The Steiner Ranch owned by our friend Nate Belden is a historically important ranch in Bennett Valley that we believe has great potential for Syrah.
Keiser Road Vineyard
Keiser Road Vineyard, owned by Norman Mains and Ginna Beharry, is a wonderful little vineyard that we believe will be a perfect place to grow Grenache.
Farming
Our goal in farming is to produce consistent fruit of great intensity, color and flavor. Anyone can grow a grapevine - they are very hardy and vigorous plants - but it takes some effort to coax 28,000 grapevines (at Dry Stack Vineyard) into producing consistent fruit with great character.
In our farming we use the following practices to help us:
1. Low Yields - Syrah is very yield sensitive and in our cool climate of Bennett Valley it is even more sensitive. We keep our yields below 5 pounds per plant - about 18 clusters for each vine of 18 to 20 shoots or 1 cluster per shoot. About 1/2 the crop the vines would naturally like to carry. Every season we send a crew through to remove the unwanted fruit and drop it on the ground.
2. Minimum irrigation - Syrah is also very, very water sensitive. Able to function on very little water, Syrah will keep on going when every other variety on the ranch has given up. We try to keep it on the hairy edge, giving it just enough water to function while giving the vine the idea that this may be its last season and that it should put all its energy into its fruit. A grapevine adapts its growth pattern to the available water. With enough water, it will simply just keep growing and growing ignoring its fruit as unnecessary. But, by cutting back the water at the right time, you can convince the vine to stop all vegetative growth and focus all its energies on its fruit.
3. Careful fertilization - Syrah is phosphorous sensitive - especially on the soil and rootstock combination we have at Dry Stack Vineyard - we keep a careful eye on it to make sure it has enough.We try to use organic fertilizers whenever we can. We believe they help build the soil and support the microbiological life that is in the soil, but their low impact on vine performance forces to rely on conventional fertilizers much of the season. But given in small doses, the total amount of fertilizer applied is literally a few pounds for each acre.
4. Strict canopy management. Sunlight is critical to proper ripening of Syrah. Too much and you get burned, pruney flavors, too little and you get green, tomato-ey flavors. By using a vertical trellis and carefully managing the canopy, we get fully ripe fruit with deep black berry character.
5.We farm sustainably on both of our ranches. We believe we are as soft as anyone in Sonoma County. We use BioDiesel to power our truck and tractors - which is something we believe strongly in. And we strive to keep the carbon cycle functioning through the entire vineyard. We have come to the conclusion that the weed control options available to us under the organic rule (mechanical tillage, flame, steam, vinegar) we ineffective and either dangerous or deleterious to the point of being worse than the softest chemical alternative. So we are not Organic, but we like to think that no organic farm has a softer impact that we do. We use no pre-emergent herbicides, nothing stronger than RoundUp. This keeps the carbon cycle functioning in the vine row. It's more expensive for us because we have to treat several times a year, but we feel it gives us the control we need with the least impact. By spraying at the right time of the year we use the absolute minimum of material. We have extended the same thinking to our pest and disease control programs. We use the organic alternatives most of the time, in fact for insect control we have never had to leave the organic fold as there are effective materials available, but for Mildew - the scourge of grape growing in the North Coast - we are fighting the same battle we are with weeds. The organic options are viable, but require lots and lots of material to be sprayed and lots and lots of passes through the vineyard burning diesel fuel and compacting the vineyard. We are starting to experiment with the new generation of softer fungicides on the market that gives us 3 weeks of protection (instead of 10 days). By applying a few ounces of material every 21 days we can stop applying 60 pounds of sulfur per acre over the same period.