Vineyards
Syrah Vineyard
Our Syrah comes from my Mom’s Reward Ranch Vineyard in Amador County in the Shenandoah Valley AVA. Shenandoah Valley is in the Sierra Nevada foothills (south of Placerville and north of Sutter Creek). This vineyard is at 1466’ elevation with rolling hill topography.
Daytime temperatures are warm. It is often in the nineties during the summer and we get spikes above 100 degrees several times each year. On the other hand, cool nights are the norm due to both the elevation and to breezes flowing up from the Delta. The wide diurnal temperature shifts produce ripe fruit balanced with good acidity.
Most of our neighbors grow Zinfandel, for which the Shenandoah Valley is best known. The bulk of my Mom’s vineyard is Sangiovese which we planted in 1995. This fruit is purchased by our neighbors at Vino Noceto. The newer Syrah block is only a couple of acres, and I take all of that fruit.
I began prepping the Syrah block in 2000 and planted in Spring of 2001. The first order of business was to rip out an enormous amount of rock, mostly in the form of VW sized granite boulders that would otherwise have made trenching, planting and cultivation impossible. All the rock in this vineyard is distributed throughout the deep red volcanic and granitic coarse sandy loam topsoil. Unlike a situation in which bedrock forms a continuous layer below the topsoil and acts as a barrier to root penetration, the vines (if you can get them in the ground) love growing around the boulders deep into this very fertile and well drained dirt.
Since Syrah is a pretty vigorous varietal, the main concern on this site is to rein in the vines’ vegetative growth. For this reason, I chose to have the Syrah scion wood grafted onto 3309 rootstock which tends to self-limit its rooting depth and thereby limit the vigor of the above-ground part of the plant.
The downside of shallow rooting is the increased need for irrigation. This is especially true in the case of Syrah has proved itself to be relatively poor at regulating its water usage during periods of drought induced stress. In order to try to keep the plants healthy without enabling rank growth, I chose to run two drip irrigation lines down each row with each line dripping into the every other space between plants. The idea behind this setup is called “partial root zone drying” and has since fallen out of favor among viticulturalists as a means to induce stress in part of the plant. What I still like about this irrigation setup, however, is that it enables us to irrigate to a reasonable depth by alternating the lines (thus alternating the halves of the plants’ root zones receiving water) without delivering so great a total amount of water that the vines grow out of control.
The scion wood (the above ground Syrah part of the plant) grafted onto the rootstock is clone 877, part of the newest generation of clonal selections imported from France. It is noted for producing small clusters and good flavor intensity. Unfortunately, in the time since we planted, 877 has also started showing a lot of virus and may not turn out to be a very long lived selection. In the meantime, this clone is delivering good fruit notable for its fine perfume and very mild tannins.
The vine rows run North-South. This allows even exposure on both sides of the vine’s fruiting zone as the sun travels from East to West. The rows are spaced nine feet apart, and within the rows, the vines are fiVe feet apart. Shoots are trained vertically through trellis wires to prevent excessive shading of the fruit-zone. We thin to about sixteen shoots per vine in order to keep bunches and shoots well spaced. In the past, we removed some leaves on the East side of the vine to allow more light and air into the cooler morning side of the vine. We have phased out this practise, however, and abandoned it entirely in 2007. This is mostly due to a gut feeling that exposed fruit may produce dark, powerful, jammy flavors at the expense of floral, spicy, herbal notes. In general, I now feel that if we do a good job of shoot thinning and positioning, the fruit will receive the appropriate amount of dappled light without additional leaf stripping. The shoots are topped at three and a half feet at the start of veraison (the point at which the berries change color and begin the ripening stage) in order to slow down and even up ripening. Near the end of veraison, we drop the bunches that have grown into contact with other bunches and those that still show green berries. Yields have been around three tons per acre.