We celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary in June and 10-year California-versary in August - and by “celebrated,” I mean we got takeout from our amazing neighborhood Mexican restaurant (shoutout to El Molino Central) and fell asleep at 8pm before waking up at midnight to feed our little one. It felt important, though. Just taking a moment to appreciate that we’ve been here for a decade. Together we drove away from our idyllic Iowa hometown, and in the last 10 years we’ve gone from 22-year-old newlyweds to dog parents, dog parents x 2, and now the parents of two wacky and delightful little boys who are doted on by one golden retriever (Maya) and contentedly ignored by the wizened Kinley.
I think about the drives we’ve taken in the 10 years that have passed since then: our daily commute from Santa Rosa to Sonoma when we both worked on 8th Street East; our drive to and from Iowa before and after our 2013 New Zealand harvest, this time with Kinley in tow. Our harrowing drive from our mountain home down the Oakville Grade when we evacuated from the Sonoma wildfires in 2017. Our drive to Queen of the Valley hospital in February of 2019 and again this May, each time knowing we’d be coming home with a tiny person in the car. Each of these experiences helped forge our path – a million desire lines drawing the contours our lives. As always, as we prepare to hit send on an email introducing new wines to you all, we’re nervous and excited but mostly just overwhelmingly grateful.
Which brings us to the Fall 2021 release, which we’ll describe in more detail below. We have two wines from our beloved Shake Ridge Ranch in this release, so Cody did his signature move of a quick 1000-word essay about this amazing place. Read at your own risk.
We also had the privilege of talking with our friendly neighborhood consigliere, Chris Cottrell, for a Bedrock Wine Conversations podcast episode. We got to share lots of stories, and in the last 45 minutes of the podcast talked about the wines. We included podcast minute markers below if you'd like to skip ahead to a particular wine. We're so grateful to Chris for taking the time to ask us such thoughtful questions and sharing his invaluable feedback on the wines as well! Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app.
And finally, we’re absolutely thrilled to have tasting notes for this release illustrated by @freshcutgardenhose – James Beard Award-winning artist and sommelier Maryse Chevriere. Her work is wonderfully goofy, charming and incisive, and we love how she captured these wines.
Sending so much love and gratitude to you all!
Emily, Cody, Cal, Drew, Kinley & Maya
2020 COLE RANCH RIESLING, COLE RANCH AVA, MENDOCINO COUNTY
As always, the 2020 Cole Ranch Riesling is a wine that’s especially close to my (Cody's) heart – our fifth year working with the old-vine Riesling from Cole Ranch, which seems hard to believe even in retrospect. When I tied my business card to the gate with the brown paper handle from our lunch sack in October of 2016, I didn’t think we’d get the fruit in the first place, and I never would have dared to dream that we’d grow to know and love the vineyard over half a decade (and counting).
The vines were planted at Cole Ranch in 1973, making it one of the oldest Riesling vineyards in the country. The vineyard sits in a narrow valley in the mountains between Boonville and Ukiah. The valley benefits from the cooling maritime influence of nearby Anderson Valley, and yet has a large diurnal and seasonal range of temperatures like inland Mendocino County. It snows in Cole Ranch once or twice a winter, and by October the nights are freezing cold. I always find myself riding the picking bins in the morning, in thermal tights under a pair of wool jeans, praying for the sun to crest the ridge and warm me up. We are fortunate to work with the fruit, and grateful that John Cole thought to plant Riesling in his valley so many years ago. The vineyard is looking better than ever thanks to the care of new owners Mike Lucia and his wife Jill, and Mike’s right-hand man Evie who lives on the ranch and has taken care of the vines for longer than we’ve been getting fruit.
Our 2020 Cole Ranch Riesling is cut in the mold of our 2018 – 3.4 g/L residual sugar with a 3.03 pH and 7.3 titratable acidity. We see this as a wine that's going to age beautifully, though it is delicious now with a short decant bringing out the lime zest and tangerine peel notes — tasting great on the third night open (that is, if the bottle lasting that long!).
2020 EXPERIMENTAL SERIES #7: KICK RANCH SAUVIGNON BLANC, FOUNTAINGROVE DISTRICT, SONOMA
Kick Ranch, in the cool Fountaingrove District AVA in the mountains north of Santa Rosa, was one of the very first vineyards I visited with Morgan after starting work at Bedrock. In retrospect, that may have been the first time I’d tasted Sauvignon Blanc off the vine – I remember loving the vineyard then just because the grapes tasted so good, and because the misty morning view down over Santa Rosa and over to Taylor Mountain was so lovely.
The Sauvignon Blanc is planted on the rockiest soils at Kick Ranch, at the top of the ridge as the vineyard road winds upward past the rest of the blocks into the Mayacamas Mountains. The rocky soils keep the vine’s vigor in check; careful canopy management creating a range of sun exposures gives a whole range of fruit flavors in the wine; and cold nights and generally cool days give the wine a citrusy zest and floral raciness. The grapes were whole-cluster pressed and the juice was fermented in Stockinger 228L barrels (with a second- and a third-fill for a touch of sappy oak sweetness) and left on lees for ten months until bottling in July. I’m really pleased with this wine and am looking forward to working with the beautiful fruit from Kick Ranch for many years to come.
2020 SHAKE RIDGE VIOGNIER, SIERRA FOOTHILLS, AMADOR COUNTY
Our 2020 Shake Ridge Viognier hails from H-Block, which is the only block of white grapes on the front ranch at Shake Ridge (the oldest and original plantings at the ranch, as with our two blocks of Syrah). It’s a block I’ve always eyed jealously. Whereas most of the blocks at Shake Ridge are planted on the various ridges and hillsides of the ranch, H-block dips down into a cold air drainage in a way that most of the other blocks of red grapes avoid. As the crest of the Sierra Nevada cools dramatically at night, and as the convective uplift coming out of the Central Valley stops, cold and dense air sitting high in the mountains starts rushing downhill through all the valleys and canyons. You can feel the effect just walking the vineyard at night – the temperature from the top of a block to the bottom can be as much as 30°F different, in the short span of just a few dozen vines.
Because H-Block is planted into one of these cold air drainages, the grapes retain acidity and fresh flavors in a way that works wonderfully well for Viognier, which tends towards exuberant ripeness otherwise. The wine strikes a balance between Viognier’s lush apricot flavors and fresher citrus and lemongrass tones, with a nice core of acidity framed by Viognier’s trademark phenolic grip. The wine was raised in one second-fill Stockinger 228L and an additional stainless steel drum, again to strike a balance between freshness and richness. I suspect that a lot of folks who imagine that they don’t like Viognier will be surprised, like me, by just how much they like this rendition. Further proof that Shake Ridge is a special place for grapes, in this case because of Ann Kraemer’s remarkable intuition and insight to plant Viognier in the exact right spot.
2020 EVANGELHO RED WINE, CONTRA COSTA COUNTY
Our Evangelho Red Wine, a blend of primarily Carignan with a touch of Mourvèdre, has become (I think) one of our most important wines – very old vines farmed with the utmost attention and care by folks that we love; from a historically under-appreciated California growing region; made in a fashion that blurs the line between Old World and New World; that blends classicism, freshness, and richness in one delicious bottle.
These old vines, planted own-rooted in the 1890s in the Oakley Sands, have seen and weathered it all and are wiser for it. The Oakley Sands are one of California’s most distinctive terroirs – extremely sandy soils and regularly gusty winds giving wines of freshness, elegance and perfume – and I’d argue that Evangelho Vineyard is one of California’s greatest vineyards.
Our 2020 Evangelho Red Wine sits between the zesty 2018 and (modestly) richer 2019, stylistically – linear and fresh like the 2018 but a touch silkier on the palate, with a hint of the fruit sweetness and youthful exuberance that characterizes the 2019. As in previous vintages, the wine was fermented with 30% whole cluster under a submerged cap and aged for ten months in neutral 400L barrels. As I’ve said before, I love the 400L barrel size for Carignan – it retains freshness and builds tension like all large format barrels, but with a less reductive tendency than the 500L and 600L barrels that I prefer for Syrah and Mourvèdre. The Carignan gives the wine a singular juiciness and floral and red-fruit aromas, with a soft tannin profile and vibrant acidity. The inclusion of cluster adds spice to the nose, while the small portion of carbonic maceration and Mourvèdre add flesh to the palate. We model our winemaking after the great cru Beaujolais - wines that are delightful when young but age beautifully as well.
2019 SHAKE RIDGE SYRAH, SIERRA FOOTHILLS, AMADOR COUNTY
If it’s not abundantly clear from the write-up below… we adore Shake Ridge Ranch. When retelling the story on the Bedrock Wine Conversations podcast of how we connected with this vineyard back in 2016, we got to reminisce about the first day we met Ann Kraemer. She didn’t have Syrah available, but toured us around the property in her ATV, the epitome of graciousness and hospitality. Through a twist of fate, she did end up having a few tons of Syrah available for us that harvest, and we were thrilled. That year, our vision was to make our Syrahs the exact same way across different vintages to really “let the vineyard shine.” What we’ve learned since is that sometimes, modifying our winemaking is the best way to showcase a particular vineyard – shaping the winemaking techniques to suit the site. As a result, the 2019 might just be our favorite rendition yet. Fermented with about 40% whole cluster and 3% Viognier, the 2019 saw about 25% new oak aged for 15 months. We’re thrilled with the texture of this wine, showcasing the lovely Shake Ridge notes of plum and violet along with classic Syrah characteristics of white pepper and spice.
94 points, Antonio Galloni
"The 2019 Syrah Shake Ridge is absolutely gorgeous. Bright aromatics, finely sculpted fruit and bright acids lend energy and vibrancy throughout. The tannins are quite present, but they are also very nicely integrated within the wine's fabric. This is such a distinctive wine."
THE SOILS OF SHAKE RIDGE RANCH
It’s wonderfully poetic that California, home to successive generations of migrants with golden dreams, is itself an emigrant landmass, formed elsewhere and carried from afar. California as we know it is, on a geological timescale, relatively recent. Until the late Jurassic, the Pacific Ocean would have met the North American continent very near to Sutter Creek at the base of the Sierra Foothills. The land here came about because tectonic forces drove islands against the edge of the North American continent, because the heavier Farallon plate sank beneath the continental plate, and because the heat from this subduction created plutons and volcanoes that spewed vast amounts of lava and ash across the landscape. This pattern repeated itself for hundreds of millions of years with successive waves of island arcs, creating the faults that we know today as the Calaveras-Shoo Fly Fault, the Melones Fault, and the Bear Mountain Fault, which collectively compose the Foothills fault system. The forces of heat and compression resulting from the subduction of the Farallon plate transformed the rocks caught in the middle – shale to slate and schist; limestone to marble; serpentine, quartz, gold, and other gemstones from the depths of the Earth. The fantastically diverse soils that characterize the Western Metamorphic Belt of the Sierra Foothills are evidence of vast island arcs stuck to the continental margin – accreted exotic terranes, in the (unusually poetic) parlance of the geologist.
Shake Ridge Ranch lies just uphill of the Melones Fault, almost directly in the center of the richest portion of the California Mother Lode. Gold in the Sierra Foothills was first found in streambed placer deposits but the focus of mining quickly shifted to the source of the gold, a thick vein of quartz within the Melones Fault. The Argonaut mine outside Sutter Creek was the first lode mine, opened in 1850, and was followed quickly by dozens more. Together, the three largest mines of the area – the Kennedy, Eureka, and Argonaut – produced over four and a half million ounces of gold. When the Kennedy mine closed in 1942, due to the war, it was the deepest mine in North America; its 150 miles of underground tunnels went to a vertical depth of 5,912 feet. The rich geological history of the Sierra Foothills is evident at every roadcut revealing schist, Mariposa slate, greenstone, and marble, and in the vineyard rows at Shake Ridge where chunks of quartz litter the ground.
ANN KRAEMER AND THE KRAEMER BUNCH
The Kraemer family has ancient roots in California: Jose Antonio Yorba, a distant forebear, came to California in 1769 as a member of the Portola Expedition, 23 years old and a Royal Catalan Volunteer soldier. Their expedition traveled from Baja California into the new territory of Alta California, all the way to San Francisco Bay via what would come to be known as the El Camino Real. The Portola Expedition was the first recorded European land entry and exploration of California. After the expedition, Yorba settled on a piece of land along the Santa Ana River in Southern California; he received a grant known as the Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana for 62,516 acres. The river was originally named the Dulcisimo Nombre de Jesus de los Temblores (River of the Sweetest Name of Jesus of the Earthquakes) by Father Juan Crespi, a highly literal moniker after the large earthquake that struck the expeditionary party on July 28, 1769. (Pre-Richter Scale, the explorers measured and recorded the numerous aftershocks based on the number of Hail Marys they could utter during each tremor.) The earthquake seems not to have bothered Jose Antonio Yorba, who returned to claim the land after he retired from the Royal Catalan Volunteer army. Yorba’s sons would claim their own ranchos, adding to the family’s land; at one time, the Yorba family land comprised a significant portion of today’s Orange County.
Ann and her seven brothers and sisters grew up on a citrus orchard on the family’s Rancho Canon de Santa Ana, and the family’s spirit of cooperation and preservation traveled north with them when they purchased land from the Oneto family on Shake Ridge Road outside Sutter Creek in the Sierra Foothills.
Shake Ridge Ranch was first planted in 2003, under the careful eye of Ann Kraemer. Ann worked for many years as a vineyard manager and consulting viticulturalist for Domaine Chandon, Swanson, Cain, Calera, Hobbs, and Shaefer, in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Her father, Dan, loved to tell a story that illustrates Ann’s attention to detail: During soil preparation, someone remarked on the round object in the back pocket of Ann’s jeans and asked, “Do you chew?” Ann was confused, until she remembered the compass in her pocket that she’d been using to lay out vineyard row orientation in each of her blocks depending on soil type, variety, and exposition. Not chewing tobacco, just a keen eye for detail.
Ann Kraemer continues a long tradition of scientific empiricism in Amador County. In a short time she and her family have created one of the premier vineyards of the Sierra Foothills, built on Ann’s experience as a consulting viticulturalist and her family’s dedication to agriculture and hard work. I don’t know of any other vineyard where the same folks get up at 3AM for the night pick, offer to make lattes for anybody trucking fruit from the vineyard in the morning, catch up on paperwork before lunch, go out to pull bird nets off for the following night’s pick in the afternoon, and then host dinner and make sure that everyone has a bunk before bedding down themselves. It’s an inspiring place to make wine from, in every aspect, and we’re very fortunate to work with fruit from Shake Ridge.
