Vineyard Site

Our estate vineyard lies in the heart of the Russian River Valley on Vine Hill Road. On a typical morning, the marine fog rolls in before dawn, giving the land a gentle reminder of another era in geologic time when its soil was washed by the ocean's waves. When the fog clears at midday, Mount St. Helena is visible to the northeast and the coastal ridges of Sonoma County to the west. The rows of our vines undulate over the rolling hills they are planted on, their roots exploring the diverse soils beneath them. It is hard to miss the spectacular natural beauty of our home.

The vineyard itself is complex, constantly evolving and multi-generational. Tom Dehlinger planted the first generation of our vines in 1975 and oversaw 15 years of subsequent plantings. His daughters Eva and Carmen Dehlinger now oversee the planting of our second generation of vines. Between plantings, the land receives a multi-year fallowing regime that features deep plowing, cover crops, and composting to regenerate the land for years to come.

Currently, our estate features four winegrape varieties (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah), a vegetable garden, table grapes, olives, a creek, a pond, and woodland. This diversity reflects the dynamic nature of our site.

A vineyard-driven wine is made unique by its soil. 

The site that our family has been privileged to own and operate since 1973 has a distinguished history that goes back about 5 million years. At that time, our land, now 13 miles from the Pacific Ocean, was right at the water's edge. Over an extended period, a semi-circular ocean bay about 15 miles long and perhaps 8 miles wide was slowly filled with fine sandy and silty sediments that had eroded from nearby older volcanic rock. Ultimately a layer hundreds of feet in depth was deposited. Salt water clams were common and left shell bearing lenses five to twenty feet thick.

Perhaps a million years later, along the eastern rim of this bay, a related but less extensive deposit was made under fresh water conditions in a strip 10 miles long and less than a mile wide. This strip, not subject to the washing of the tides, contained more gravel and a reddish clay. Our property, with 45 plantable vineyard acres, is at the junction of these two deposits and at the extreme northern reach of the second one. Later still, during the Ice Age, the coastal hills were pushed up to our west to a height of 500 to 1200 feet, creating a mild barrier from the ocean, giving us an ideal summer climate - an undulating tension between influences of the cold Pacific and the warm California interior - that winegrapes love.

The larger deposit referred to above has weathered into the fine sandy loam that is goldridge soil. Its topsoil is typically gray to brownish-gray and about two feet deep, with a composition of 70% fine sand, 20% silt, and 10% clay. Its subsoil is typically a yellowish clay loam with an additional three to four feet of depth and a composition of 55% fine sand, 20% silt, and 25% clay. When European immigrants first began agricultural pursuits in this area they found the goldridge soil to be ideally suited for apples, cherries, and berries. It yielded good crops of high quality and well-sized produce without any irrigation, as the substantial depth and the silt and clay fractions in the subsoil could bank enough water to sustain these plants through the generally rain-free six-month growing season.

The smaller reddish deposit has evolved into the altamont gravelly fine sandy loam (also referred to as Sebastopol series soil). Its topsoil is a brown to grayish brown layer only one foot thick with a composition of 5% gravel and coarse sand, 60% fine sand, 22% silt and 13% clay. The associated dull red to brown subsoil is an additional two to three feet thick with a make up of 50% fine sand, 20% silt, and 30% clay. Its total water holding capacity is less than the goldridge soil, but the higher clay content is conducive to a slow extraction of water over a long period of dry summer growth. The early farmers considered the altamont soil less valuable than the goldridge soil because the tonnage yields were lower. It was planted mainly to apples and winegrapes, the latter crop being favored by the higher aspect of the soil, meaning there was a lower likelihood of damaging spring frosts. By the 1920s, it had been observed that the altamont soil would ripen its crops up to a week earlier than the goldridge soil, which was a distinct advantage in fresh produce marketing as the very first ripe fruits of summer used to command significantly higher prices.

Our breakdown between the two soils is about 15 acres of goldridge soil, 25 acres of altamont soil, and 5 that are a hybrid, generally with a goldridge topsoil and an altamont subsoil. What we have learned over forty years of winegrowing and winemaking on this property is that both soils can produce excellent, unique, and distinctive wines which reflect the way that the soil supports plant growth and fruit development. Wines from the goldridge soils tend to be fruit-forward, aromatic, and supple on the palate (especially in the case of Pinot noir). The altamont soil wines are often more brooding, denser, thick, and firm. Since the mid-1990s, we have been making Pinot noir and Syrah bottlings from the property under the designations Goldridge and Altamont in homage to the goldridge soils on our vineyard site and the red gravelly altamont soils on our hilltops.

About a quarter of our altamont soil acreage, the part occupying the hilltops and ridge tops, has a very thin topsoil, and in these areas the grapes grow almost directly in the subsoil and struggle more. Yields average well under two tons per acre and the grapes are small and especially concentrated. These are the spots with special label designations such as Octagon and High Plains that we bottle in particularly good vintages when volume has been sufficient.