Going Back to the Future with Old Zin Vineyards
Getting all philosophical while walking in a 120-year-old vineyard
Posted: Aug 3, 2011 11:00am ET
Note to
self: Whenever you hear someone grumble that California lacks the wine pedigree
of Europe, remember the day you walked through San Lorenzo vineyard with Pete
Seghesio and his boys.
It was one
of those midsummer Sonoma County mornings when the fog scares off early and
the heat rises at you like exhaust from the dirt. Joe and Will were chasing
each other in ATVs around the outskirts of the vines as Pete showed me the
oldest patch of grapes in San Lorenzo, a 7-acre parcel near the Russian
River in Alexander Valley.
"The deed
for the ranch goes back to 1896," said Seghesio, whose great-grandfather Frank Passalacqua paid 10 gold coins for it. The copy
of the deed is framed on the wall of his house, which overlooks the vineyard,
and it refers to "seven acres of young vines."
Seems to me, 120 years is a pretty damn good pedigree, but
then I'm just an upstart. My line of the Fish family has only been around these
shores since 1695, just chump change on the European pedigree scale.
I've been in a lot of old Zinfandel vineyards the past few
months: Pagani, Hayne, Monte Rosso, Lytton East, just to name some. It's for a story I'm
working on, inspired in part by a new organization named the Historic Vineyard
Society, a non-profit dedicated to documenting and preserving notable old
vines. Folks like Mike Officer of Carlisle Vineyards, David Gates of Ridge and
Morgan Twain-Peterson of Bedrock are behind it, so too wine maven Jancis
Robinson.
I'm a softy
for things historic, and if there's anyone who reviews more Zin in a year than
I do, I'd like see their tasting notes and teeth whitening bills. So the
Historic Vineyard Society, you might say, had me at hello.
The group
has already compiled a list of more than 200 vineyards that were planted before
1960 and has recently launched a website.
Only a handful of vineyards have detailed entries so far but the list
is expanding.
That day in
San Lorenzo I was wondering how these feeble vines, some of which were planted
when jowly Grover Cleveland was president, were still producing great wine. And
I was also keenly aware that the Seghesio family had just sold their winery, though
Pete and his sister Camille held onto San Lorenzo, which they inherited from
their late mother Rachel Ann, who was born a Passalacqua.
This Zinfandel vine in San Lorenzo vineyard was likely planted in the 19th century.
A few nights later I opened a bottle of Seghesio Sonoma
County Zinfandel 2009.
Grapes from the San Lorenzo ranch go into the county blend, although not from
the oldest vines. It retails for $24 but often sells for about $20, and there
isn't a more reliable Zin value out there.
As I sipped
a glass, my mind was on the past and the future. Whenever you write about old vineyards like
these, the story is always unfinished, even when the ink has dried or web page
is live. As long as the roots are in the dirt, it's a story in progress.
A
hundred and twenty years is not a bad prologue, pedigree-wise.
Love that vineyard, Tim. Truly one of the iconic properties in CA. Glad Pete held on to this piece of history. I like to think of it as an open air grape vine museum.