Wine Article

Consistently one of the greatest Russian River Valley vineyards that we work with, Papera Ranch was planted in 1934. While the rest of the vineyard blocks are planted predominately to Zinfandel, we naturally get the “weird” block (because such things stoke our strange souls). As planted, our block is 49% Zinfandel, 44% Carignan with the remainder being Syrah, Petite Sirah, Valdigue, Green Hungarian, Mission and sole vines of Pinot Noir and Trousseau Gris. That said, the actual blend is a higher percentage of Zinfandel, as we drop the Carignan to one cluster per shoot to bring it into Zinfandel’s ripening window (Carignan can crop and ripen significantly behind Zinfandel in this cool locale). The resulting wine is a co-fermentation of all the varieties that melds the rich blueness of Piner-Olivet area fruit with the brightness and crackling lift of Carignan. This wine usually ages extremely well, however the 2017 is certainly more forward at this point then some of its predecessors, so don’t hesitate to crack open one of these on the sooner side with some air!