Old Vine Cline: “Ancient” Wines from Cline Cellars

We all know that some wines are meant to age. But in the plant-based world grapes can be an outlier in that they can live for well over a century and still produce quality fruit. A few years back I was in Portugal and visited head trained vines that were 136 years old and still a workhorse. So when Cline Cellars released their Ancient Vines series it intrigued me because this allows you to literally taste history. That their wines are priced between $18-$23 also offers an incredible value for the experience you can have. In California there are very few vineyards that are truly historic properties, meaning the vines have been in the ground for over 100 years, and are own-rooted, as opposed to being grafted. The Historic Vineyard Society (HVS) group is dutifully reviving and preserving these historical vineyards. For example, in California, Sausalito Canyon Vineyard (San Luis Obispo County) was planted in 1880 and still produces fruit today. Other HVS registered and non-registered vineyards from the 1880s include Bechthold (Lodi), Cazas (Temecula), Martinelli (Russian River Valley) and the truly one of a kind Grandpere vineyard from Deaver Winery in Amador County planted in the 1860s! What this means is that you can experience fruit that still makes wine, and a wine you can drink. Maybe most of us can’t drink a wine that is 100 years old, but we can certainly drink wine that is made from 100-year-old grapes. Now, the term “ancient vines” has no real definition, but typically refers to vines that are over 75 years old. Just like us humans, vines lose their vigor (strength, vitality) as they age and many of these wines have some complexity to them, but are less powerful and robust than younger wines. The complexity often comes from roots that are 30 – 40 feet deep as most of these historic vineyards have always been dry-farmed, meaning no irrigation is provided, the vines themselves need to seek out water.

Cline offers their 2017 Zinfandel, Mourvèdre, Carignane, and their 2018 Mourvèdre Rose from Contra Costa County, the northern portion of the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay area. These are uniformly lighter style wines but definitely show characteristics familiar with their grape type, and all provide that most unique of pursuits – a sense of immortality.

Far From the Madding Crowds: New Book Explores Wines' Crushing Reality

There’s a perpetual myth that being a winemaker is sexy, cool, and that all a winemaker really does is jet off to exotic locations to eat and drink with people who are impossible tanned, flush with cash and orbit in the highest echelons of society. Seriously, if that’s the case I’ll quite wine writing and start wine making. The reality is that making wine is farming, it’s cleaning up crap, putting out fires (sometimes literally) and hoping you make the correct decisions because you can’t go back and fix a wine once you’ve screwed it up – and you only get one chance each year. In Chris Weir’s new book, The Mad Crush, he details one specific vintage at a small winery, Saucelito Canyon, located in the upper Arroyo Grande Valley in San Luis Obispo County. If you haven’t heard of it you’re in good company as their story is somewhat typical of the majority of wineries in the U.S. – that is to say, small, under the radar family operations struggling with a shoestring budget. Compound that with where Saucelito Canyon is located - in the middle of nowhere (I’m not kidding) - that they ran off generators and that the vineyard was 115 years old when Weir was working that harvest.

The historic vineyard

Weir reflects on the 1995 vintage, its shortcoming, problems, amusements and its final wine. I have a soft spot for Saucelito Canyon and have been to the property many times, though it’s not open to the public except for once each year.

#1: This is truly a historic vineyard, with own-rooted Zinfandel vines planted in 1880, and there are very few of these old vineyards still around.

#2: This was one of the very first places a young wine writer (me) ever visited and realized the breadth, depth and complexity of wine.

#3 – This is where I got engaged to my wife. I could wax poetic about the spiritual ambience I feel about this property, but Weir mixes both the sentiment of the place and the unsexy reality of out of date winemaking equipment quite well. “In loftier moments you could call winemaking an art,” he writes. “Practically speaking it’s a craft. But toward the end of the crush, there’s little time or energy left for elegant thoughts. Your brain is foggy, your spine aches, your hands are scored and stained red, and shit just needs to get done.” Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. This is an easy read, a fun read, and one that will set you straight on the glorious and grunt-laden world of winemaking.

Me and the Mrs. at the vineyard, May/2015

The Mad Crush

by Sean Christopher Weir

158 pages, 15 photos

$11.95 Paperback, $9.95 Ebook

www.TheMadCrush.com