Wine & Spirits - Winter 2020 - 39

Top 100 Wineries

Terre Rouge

von Strasser

CALIFORNIA | SIERRA FOOTHILLS
Focusing on Rhône varieties, Bill Easton's Sierra Foothills wines
get more precise and true-to-place with each vintage.

CALIFORNIA | NAPA VALLEY
A Diamond Mountain cabernet specialist, Rudy von Strasser
captures the cool ripeness of the district's reds.

BILL EASTON

BILL EASTON BEGAN DOMAINE DE LA TERRE ROUGE
in the mid-1980s, after spending several years
selling "wines for the people" from the Rhône
Valley and elsewhere at Solano Cellars near
Berkeley. He focused his plantings in the Sierra
Foothills, just east of Sacramento, where he
had grown up. There he found parcels of syrah,
grenache, mourvedre, zinfandel and white varieties, many of them planted on high-elevation
sites reﬂecting an array of soils, mostly of volcanic origin, along with granite, quartz, schist
and windblown elements, all of them challenging and devigorating. Easton says that his vineyards, deﬁned by low yields and long growing
seasons, are settling into more mature expressions and, he adds, he's matured with them. "I
think we really understand the harvest window
better, and how to control the canopy to slow
down ripeness and protect the fruit." His 2017s
reﬂect the warm vintage, though each of his top
wines-the estate mourvedre, the home ranch
syrah from DTR and the spectacular multi-vineyard blend, Ascent-possesses a dusty red-earth
inﬂection. The 2017 Ascent is possibly the most
complete wine Easton has ever made, a powerful
expression of mountain warmth and mountain
soils. -P.J.C.

RUDY VON
STRASSER

2016 Diamond Mountain District Napa Valley
Reserve ($150, 94 points) Early in his career, von
Strasser became interested in petit verdot, a variety
that ripened well on his volcanic hillside. After tinkering with cofermenting it with cabernet, he built his
Reserve on 40 percent of each, with merlot and malbec providing the balance. In 2016, he sourced petit
verdot from his own Vineyard 2131, as well as from
an acre of Sori Bricco, both parcels planted with budwood from his original estate. The blend develops
into pure red-cherry ﬂavors with a range of accents,
from cassis to thyme and rosemary, a beautiful evocation of Diamond Mountain. (150 cases)

2017 Sierra Foothills Ascent Syrah ($100, 95
points) Ascent is a selection of Terre Rouge's best
syrah barrels, and in 2017 it reaps the beneﬁts of
the winery's new oak regime: The stave wood is aged
an additional two years before being fashioned into
barrels, which gives the wines a mellow, stable oak
character. This wine is wildly rich, with dark ﬁg and
blackberry ﬂavors tethered to the madrone and bay
laurel that grows on the mountain. It has the capacity
to age 20 years or more.
FOUNDED:
FOUNDED:

1985
OWNERS:

Bill Easton &
Jane O'Riordan
WINEMAKER/
VITICULTURIST:

2017 Sierra Foothills Mourvedre ($32, 93 points)
Mourvedre seems especially well-suited to channel
the volcanic origin of Sierra Foothills soils. Grown
at a rocky site at an elevation of 2,000 feet, this is
always the last fruit to come into the winery. The wine
is dusty, warm and mildly gamey, its briary red fruits
carrying scents of chaparral.

1990

2017 Fiddletown DTR Ranch Syrah ($42, 92
points) Easton's home ranch is downslope from his
many other vineyard sources in the Foothills, its volcanic soils studded with schist and quartz. This wine
reﬂects the long growing season with notes of red
fruit, chaparral herbs and dusty minerality carried in
its dark tannins.

ACRES OWNED:

Bill Easton
ACRES OWNED:

25
ANNUAL
PRODUCTION:

20,000 cases
ESTATE GROWN:

20%

A PRAGMATIC AUSTRIAN-AMERICAN, RUDY VON
STRASSER interned at Château Laﬁte and was
John Kongsgaard's assistant winemaker at Newton before settling on Diamond Mountain. He
had found a prime spot, the south-facing slope
adjacent to Diamond Creek Winery's Volcanic Hill, and he proceeded to build a portfolio
of vineyards up and down Diamond Mountain
Road. Over 25 years, he established von Strasser as a source of great Diamond Mountain reds
before selling his estate in 2015. Since then, he's
been working out of a small winery directly on
the Silverado Trail where he bottles a range of
varieties-from grenache to charbono and dolcetto- under the Lava Vine label. Yet he still
keeps up his relationships on Diamond Mountain, the latest releases earning von Strasser its
sixteenth Top 100 Wineries award. -J.G.

OWNER:

Rudy von Strasser
WINEMAKERS/
VITICULTURISTS:

Rudy von
Strasser,
Juan Alfaro
3
ANNUAL
PRODUCTION:

8,000 cases
ESTATE GROWN:

Less than 1%

2016 Diamond Mountain District Napa Valley
Cabernet Sauvignon ($60, 93 points) In 2016,
von Strasser focused this blend on the most concentrated lots in his cellar, including wines from ﬁve
Diamond Mountain sites-Post, Vineyard 2131, Agira,
Diamond Terrace and Sori Bricco. The wine has a
range of fresh wild-berry ﬂavor-blackberries, mulberries and blueberries-that completely saturates the
earthiness of the tannins. The overall impression is
gentle and rich, beautifully balanced for a long life
ahead. (1,451 cases)
2016 Diamond Mountain District Napa Valley
Sori Bricco Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ($90,
92 points) From a high-elevation site on Diamond
Mountain, this taut cabernet has lean ﬂavors of cranberry and black cherry, dominated by smoky, tarblack tannins. Potent and juicy, those tannins need
cellar time to mellow, though the grandeur of the
underlying wine is already apparent. (319 cases)
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