Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 39

"At UC Davis, they
never talked about
the importance of
soil. I learned about
soil through André
Tchelistcheff."
-Rob Davis
the radical hang time, there were issues on two sides
of the vineyard. Munselle decided to prune those
more vigorous vines to grow more fruit. "If you've
got a vigorous vine, you've got to leave fruit on there
to get maturity," he found.
Recent vintages of Jordan are focused on vineyards
in the gravelly soils of the valley floor in eastern Geyserville, with about 40 percent coming from hillsides
that rise up into the Mayacamas Mountains. While
the winery's silky, restrained style has always been
popular in restaurants, it wasn't until the 2010 vintage that is started earning recommendations from
our panels, and exceptional scores from our wine critics. As it turns out, the vineyards tell the story.
Graham Weerts, who took charge of vineyard operations
for Jackson Family Wines in 2016, has an intimate
knowledge of the Alexander Valley through his work
at Stonestreet, where he'd made the wines since 2004.
Stonestreet gave him access to the vineyard Jess Jackson considered one of his most prized possessions:
the Alexander Mountain Estate, formerly the Gauer
Ranch.
Weerts takes me on a tour of the valley, starting
at the center, where the Stonestreet winery is sited
on the rise just below Alexander's Crown. He drives
south, to an area he calls Chalks Bend, where the
Jackson family purchased the Fieldstone Vineyard
two years ago. He describes this southeastern corner
of the valley as much cooler than farther north. It's
near an elbow in the Russian River, where the watercourse changes direction and heads west toward the
Pacific. "Fog rolls in along the river and stays longer
in this area," he says, showing off a two-acre block
of cabernet sauvignon planted in 1968. "It's an old

Georges de la Tour clone on St. George rootstock.
Tchelistcheff planted this vineyard."
He drives us north, past "an ocean of cabernet sauvignon" on the flats, which once was planted primarily to sauvignon blanc and a range of other varieties.
Then he takes a detour to an old mushroom farm
on the floodplain, a vast, white, u-shaped one-story
ranch, each of its bays now rented out to entrepreneurial winemakers.
As we head up into the "Geyserville corner," he
points out the Alden Ranch, high up in a saddle of
the Mayacamas range. "It produces rich, plush fruit,"
he says. "That's Alexander Valley, but there's nothing
valley about it." Then he points out Black Mountain
and Geyser Peak, two of the high points in the range
that create a barrier to the weather coming in off the
Pacific. "Here, you get rainwater coming down off the
hills, and gravel coming down with the water." It's a
different underground environment than the silt that
collects further downstream, and further west, on the
Russian River floodplain.
Up on top of Alexander Mountain, Weerts is
focused on the future, when heat waves may well
be more severe, and managing sun exposure may
become ever more critical. He's busy replanting the
steep, terraced vineyards, replacing the horizontal
rows that follow the contour of the hills with vertical rows that can be farmed by "panel." The panels
have a specific exposure, so the work can be prioritized for that exposure, rather than attempting to
farm, prune and harvest an east-facing terrace row
differently from the same row as it wraps around to
the west. As he replants, he is using "t-posts," allowing him to easily switch up the trellis to accommodate new conditions that climate change may bring.
WINE & SPIRITS

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018

Contents
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - Cover1
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - Cover2
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 1
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 2
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 3
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - Contents
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 5
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 6
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 7
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 8
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 9
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 10
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 11
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 12
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 13
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 14
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 15
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 16
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 17
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 18
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 19
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 20
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 21
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 22
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 23
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 24
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 25
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 26
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 27
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 28
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 29
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 30
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 31
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 32
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 33
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 34
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 35
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 36
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 37
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 38
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 39
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 40
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 41
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 42
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 43
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 44
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 45
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 46
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 47
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 48
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 49
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 50
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 51
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 52
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 53
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 54
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 55
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 56
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 57
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 58
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 59
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 60
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 61
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 62
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 63
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 64
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 65
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 66
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 67
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 68
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 69
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 70
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 71
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 72
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - Cover3
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - Cover4
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/winespirits/2013winter
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https://www.nxtbookmedia.com