VINEYARDS
SONOMA MOUNTAIN ESTATE CABERNET SAUVIGNON
Laurel Glen’s vineyards lie entirely within the Sonoma Mountain appellation, the terroir of which expresses our wines. Terroir is the collection of weather, soils, altitude, and all the physical and geographic elements which make the wine what it is, and which make the wine what it is, and which make it different from wines of other terroirs. So….what is the Sonoma Mountain terroir?
Here’s what all this means to our vines and their resultant wines. During much of the growing season of March through October, cool Pacific Ocean air is sucked into the coastal valleys of California’s wine country, creating fog in the valleys by the late afternoon and burning off only by the following mid-morning. Our vineyards are, as we have seen, situated well above the valley floor, and therefore above the fog. Facing east, they greet the morning sun, and awaken from their nighttime slumber early. By mid-afternoon, when the fog is gathering in the valley and the intense afternoon sun is now radiating obliquely onto our east facing vineyards, our vines are still progressing at a relatively steady pace (not too hot, not too cool). The growing season is thus long and gradual and moderate, resulting in very balanced and fully matured fruit with a refreshing level of acidity.
Mountain fruit is renowned for its intensity and complexity. Sonoma Mountain soils in particular are enormously heterogeneous both in terms of their mineral makeup and the diversity of depths. Walk any direction in our vineyards, and within a few meters you may have passed from thin, rocky soils, to a layer of heavier marine soil, to a loamy reddish and iron-rich patch. Each vine becomes a direct expression of its own terroir. Overall, the soils are thin and rocky, which results in intensity; and they are diverse, which results in complexity.
In short, there is a reason Sonoma Mountain and Laurel Glen wines in particular taste like fully mature fruit and are balanced and complex.
CALIFORNIA HEARTLAND
People often thank us for making REDS such an affordable and delicious cabernet from Sonoma and Napa. Well, thanks for the compliment, but REDS isn't cabernet and it doesn't come from the prestige areas of California. Actually, it's made from some really great old style varietals that were the backbone of the California wine industry decades before cabernet arrived from Bordeaux and winemakers drove SUVs. REDS is now focused around the pioneer town of Lodi, and is farmed in our 80 year old zinfandel, 117 year old carignane, and more recently planted petite syrah vineyards.
Lodi is cooled by breezes that flow in from the Sacramento River Delta each afternoon and evening. Its sandy and gravelly soils support pockets of very old vines, often farmed by multi-generation growers who have never been to a winemaker dinner and don’t plan to. Their forefathers drank honest, dark, and spicy wines, modeled after the wines of their homeland. They aged their wines in oak barrels just long enough to give them complexity without losing the fresh, wonderful fruit that typifies these varietals. That's the sort of wine REDS is.
REDS has a big brother. His name is ZaZin and he was born in a 107 year old zinfandel vineyard next door to our REDS properties. He is a muscular, complex, exotic, and very rich sibling, who loves the company of spicy pastas and grilled steak. ZaZin is the essence of Lodi. The Italian pioneers would have approved!
MENDOZA, ARGENTINA
The Andes, rarely more than 100 kms from the Pacific, rise steeply out of Chile and slope down gradually into the vast desert plain of Mendoza. From there Argentina Marches across the vast Pampa Humida and over to Buenos Aires, some 1200 kms to the east. Where the wine country of Chile is intimate and gentle, with an absence of temperature extremes, Mendoza is a land of immense skies, incredible cloud formations, and violent meteorological changes.
Driving south from the city of Mendoza, is a trip backwards in time: crumbling adobe wineries surrounded by tiny malbec vineyards that are interplanted with olive and other fruit trees look like a scene out of Italy -- not surprisingly, since the Mendoza region was settled by Italians a century ago. Pictured here is our traditional malbec vineyard, which comprises 20% of our Argentine Terra Rosa blend. It's a 90 year old vineyard situated in the prestigious Alto Agrelo region of the Mendoza region, some 40 kms south of the city and 940 meters in elevation. And, yes, much of the soil work is done by mule!
The soil here is very sandy loam underlain with river rocks, so naturally dry that without the water channeled in from the Andean snowmelt little but scrub brush grows. The vines are low to the ground, double guyot pruned, 1.2 m by 1 m, and produce a bare 2 tons per acre. In a great year, the resulting wines are intense with black fruit flavors, spicy, dark, and exotic.