This is a wine borne from blood, sweat, and tears. The dream of planting our own vineyard from scratch verged on a nightmare as we struggled with the rockiest soil we’ve experienced in 20 years of working in vineyards. It almost put us out of business. The rocks were finally surmounted and the vineyard produced its first crop. Still, we had to mainly sell it to other wineries to cover the unanticipated expense of planting in the rocks. We were able to hold a small amount of fruit back for ourselves. The effort of planting was consummated by making the wine. It was clearly worth it. The rocky soil defines the wine, there is nothing else like it.

The wine is 100 percent Chardonnay, clone 4 (the clone highest in natural acidity that we are aware of).

The fruit is picked in two batches. The first batch, 80% of the wine, is harvested very early, to capture the high natural acidity and maintain wine balance and a moderate alcohol level. The second harvest, 20% of the wine, is harvested a little bit later, to capture the richness and power of the vineyard site. The fruit from each harvest is lightly whole-cluster-pressed, settled for 24 hours, and then barrel fermented. The wine goes through 100% malolactic fermentation in older neutral barrels and a few new French oak barrels. It is given 18 months of barrel aging, with no topping or sulphur added until bottling. There is also no battonage — the wine rests on the lees to age undisturbed.

209 cases were produced.