This is vineyard is a wonder for all of us who work with it. 

Christina and I first heard about in the Fall of 2019, but we could never find it, nor convince anyone to tell us just where it was. Then, at the end of harvest 2019, Fidel Guerra took us from Maglite to the Palomino, about 15 minutes away. It is on the edge of the amazing, and huge, Lopez Zinfandel vineyard, but down a side-street, and somehow we never spotted the golden canes or yellow fruit.

Fidel pruned about 5 acres of the vineyard in the winter preceding harvest 2021 and did a beautiful job. The next year, he returned and pruned slightly less of the vineyard during the winter of 2022. But now we were so in love with the vineyard and its fruit that we decided to make our wine this year from 100% of the unpruned section. This is also the oldest section of the vineyard, planted on its own roots about 1912. Our colleagues took the fruit from the pruned section.

Our wine is serious, almost severe. The wine reminds me of old-school Chablis, before global warming began to have its effect on the region. The wine is noble, structured, and high in acid. It has little in common with sherry, but much in common with the new-school Palominos being made now in Spain. Who would have thought that you could make such excellent, even classical, white wine just outside of Los Angeles?

Here is the origin of the name: During harvest 2021, we met a man who had worked in the vineyard for 60 years. He referred to the fruit as "Golden Chasselas," not Palomino. Golden Chasselas is what Californians called Palomino in the 19th century when they were planting it-- I have no idea why, and I am not sure if anyone does. It was being planted to make Sherry, so at least some people knew that it was Palomino. There was perhaps a new world sense that everything was not only new but deserved a new, American name.

72 cases,