The estate
Thirty-eight years on one slope
A hillside the valley thought too steep to plant, a family that planted it anyway, and a cellar dug into the hill behind an old stone barn.
1987
The hillside
Margaret and Hal Venn bought a south-facing slope of rough pasture with one oak and a ruined barn. They planted three acres of syrah on the steepest part, by hand, the first spring. The rest of the valley grew walnuts.
The ground
Chalk at the top, clay by the creek
The hill is three soils in a few hundred feet: thin chalk and schist at the crest, red stony loam in the middle, deep clay at the foot. That's why there are six wines and not one: each grape went where it grows best.
The pick
By hand, at dawn
Every block is picked by hand into small crates, starting at first light while the fruit is cool, by a crew that has come back every September for twenty years.
The cellar
Under the hill
In 2004 Clara came home from making wine in other people's cellars and dug her own into the hillside behind the barn: cool all year without a machine, the reds two years in French oak.
The year in the vineyard
January
Pruning
Every vine cut back by hand in the frost.
April
Budburst
First shoots; frost watches at dawn.
June
Flowering
The vines bloom and the bunches set.
August
Véraison
The grapes soften and change colour.
September
Harvest
Six weeks of picking, block by block.
November
Into barrel
The reds go down to the cellar to rest.
The estate in short
- Planted
- 1987
- Vineyard
- 62 acres in 9 blocks
- Grapes
- Syrah, pinot noir, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, grenache
- Farming
- Dry-farmed, no herbicides, sheep in winter
- Winemaker
- Clara Venn
- Vineyard manager
- Tomas Arden