Pallini Vineyard, Ukiah Valley

We first got our hands on grapes from Ed Pallini's old planting of Grenache, back in 1990, after tasting a sample of the wine it produced, which was being offered on the bulk market, that had been made by another winery in 1989. Ed's grapes are in Ukiah, but they were all under contract to a big winery in Paso Robles in 1990, and we had to drive down to Paso and take a few hundred gallons of must (the mixture of skins and juice, after crushing) from the must-lines of that winery, and drive it back up to Berkeley, in order to be able to make wine from it, ourselves. Then, in '91 the grapes became available to us, and we've been using them ever since. There've been a couple of years, as well, when Ed has sold us a bit of Zinfandel, which always ends up tasting better if we blend back into it some of his Grenache.

His vines grow on a kind of land formation most often referred to as a benchland; it's a sort of plateau, or mesa. The soil in the vineyard is comprised of a fine mixture of clay and gravel, very evenly mixed, so the drainage is exceptional. The vines are dry-farmed, and in excess of 60 years old, so there's good intensity to the fruit. That first sample of Grenache I'd tasted showed, for California Grenache, an unusual degree of character, and strong color, as well, which has often been hard to come by in Grenache grown here. We've used Ed's Grenache both for our Les Côtes Sauvages wine, (when we still made that), and, currently, it's the major component in the wine we call Rocks and Gravel.