We are at Eaglepoint Ranch in Central Mendocino County, October 30, the day before the last day of harvest. We are near the town of Ukiah, California on the 101 corridor. We are above the little town of Talmage. There is a viticulturist area that is unofficial called the Talmage Bench which is on the east side of Rush river and the east side of Highway 101, where the 1800 feet elevation on the 1255 acre property two miles from the lake county border.
I have been cruising up around these roads on the disk, or the mower, or the sulfur duster for 30 years. As I said before, I just kind of have trouble even putting my arms around that.
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John Scharffenberger Stanley purchased this property in 1973. It is one of the old original vineyard booms if you would. The Scharffenberger family, you know very, very wonderful worldly people. You know, John was able to see Europe a little bit as a young man and really saw how vineyards needed to be planted around the topography. Rather than what I call the American way and that is, big tractors level everything, knock everything over and then make a nice, and flat, and uniform novel idea which was to plant the vineyard around. As we are standing by this heritage oak tree here, that we could have got another one acre of vines, but this tree just kind of deserves to stay. Plus there are lots of other habitats here.
So, in April of 2005, the Scharffenberger family sold this property to Roland and Barbara Winslow that very, very wonderful folks that moved in Mendocino County quite a few years ago. They have a small pino vineyard over in Anderson Valley as well. And just for my own selfish stand point, wondering about new ownership and what that was going to be like. How it is going to be like to work for new folks and it has been just a wonderful transition.
The Winslow’s really have so much of the same vision about land use and stewardship of the land and caring for the earth, that I was so concerned that new ownership was going to be really, really, profit driven and while these oak trees here, let us plant some more vineyard. And of course, that can happen, and luckily, they are intent on carrying out this philosophy of proper land use of treading lightly.
We have really practiced a very minimal list approach or as little intervention as possible that can kindly even be talked about wine making. We really do not like to mess with things too much.
We do not like to use heavy hand of fertilization tactics. Because of all these biodiversity and things we talked about beneficial habitats, or some of our cover cropping and those kinds of things. Our insect balance is incredible wonderful state right now. I mean we have not had the spray for an insect pest in like 10 years. There is a certain harmony going on out in our vineyard and it is because of our viticulturist practices.
Having all this open range around the vineyard like this is just a healthy thing. It is just healthy because there are beneficial bugs that live in the blackberries, the Anagyrus wasp, when it comes in and it takes out all the leafhoppers that is why we are not having the spray for leafhoppers.
So there are all of these both from a philosophical standpoint of living a lot of nature alone. It is also smart business to tread lightly. We actually have seven different ridels planted on the ranch. Cabernet sauvignon, Sangiovese, Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Sirah, Grenache, the new planting is Cunwas. There are so many varieties. I do not think I miss one. Sometimes I forget how long I have been here. And how much we have gone through and once again, I owe so much to John Scharffenberger and his family for getting me started here and really, really tutoring me in the finer points of land management and vineyard management.
And so I am really deeply indebted to them. This here, this is Peewee. Peewee is a range mascot. She loves these cold mornings, shiver her timbers all the time. Some people say she is the boss.
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There are many different ways obviously to measure success; just getting your crop in at
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