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Current Vintage: 2005 |
To produce a single vineyard wine you should be convinced the vineyard has something unique and identifiable to offer. It should be a vineyard that will yield a wine whose intensity and personality you are unable to obtain in your other wines. We knew this about our Brown Ranch after the first harvest of its Pinot Noir grapes in 1995.
We planted our Brown Ranch to the then-new Dijon clones in 1992 along with the addition of Pommard on an exposed ridge. With our first harvest we noticed a unique character to the wines made from these grapes. There are eight lots that are separately aged and tracked. And while each have their unique qualities due to clonal, rootstock and terroir differences, there is a consistent thread running though our Brown Ranch Pinot Noir.
The ranch has a combination of typical Carneros clay loams and cobbly clay loams as well as some volcanic soil types on steeper hillsides. Three separate Dijon clones (115, 667 and 777) are planted on four different rootstocks with many soil types and exposures. Yields typically range from 2.25 to 3.5 tons/acre (30-50 hl/ha). Wines from this vineyard show more rich earthiness and black fruit than the more red-fruit character of other lots in our cellar. A dark fruit intensity with stunning persistence is a hallmark of this wine.
We only bottle very small amounts of Brown Ranch Pinot Noir each year. It is packaged into six-bottle boxes with a package design that pays tribute to George Saintsbury.
© 2006 Saintsbury
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