This wine comes from a 2 acre vineyard in deep West Petaluma. It’s a secluded and steep hill (very harrowing to farm) of dijon clone pinot noir surrounded on all sides by canyons, creeks, and olive trees on the southern edge of the olive oil producing Mcevoy Ranch. Colder than most other areas in Sonoma County and blanketed in fog every morning and evening, these dry-farmed and head trained pinot vines produce grapes with incredible acidity and intense flavor. We racked the wine only once out of the barrels before bottling and left it unfiltered: so the color is intensely dark. The alcohol is low and the wine’s body is elegant, but the red fruit and forest floor flavors are refreshingly powerful and bright.
The first time we made a pinot noir was the very first day of the devastating wildfires of 2017. We started harvest at 4am. Before the sun rose our phones exploded with messages from the winery crew: people were fleeing their homes, trapped where they were, no one was making it to the winery. We couldn’t stop the harvest – nothing stops the harvest – you finish your work or your entire year’s crop is destroyed. As the sun rose we saw smoke all around us and the only blue sky we could see was a ring in the sky right above the vineyard. The ash and smoke consumed everything right after we finished our pick. If we had started harvest even 4 hours later, everything would have been destroyed. None of the grapes were damaged, and we drove the covered grapes through thick, black walls of smoke to get them safely to the winery. We named the wine ‘the Gray Haven’ for the constant fog that blankets our Petaluma Gap appellation, to honor our city (Petaluma) as a refuge for evacuees through two massive wildfires, and for the memory of that day when the coastal wind kept the smoke and ash away just long enough for us to finish our harvest.
