Perez Vineyard

"Backyard Vineyard"
Russian River Valley
Gilbert Perez, Owner
Pinot Noir (115)

Gilbert Perez spent his career working in vineyards, learning to tend the vines and to coax them into providing high quality wine grapes. Now he uses this knowledge in his own back yard, literally. The Perez vineyard stretches in rows straight back from his back porch, family farming at its finest. The vineyard is planted exclusively to clone 115 vines, and the soils are loose and sandy, providing excellent drainage and encouraging the vines to grow deep and extensive roots.

Perez is in the southwest corner of the Russian River, sitting in a low spot that exemplifies this appellation's cool climate reputation. Cool, maritime breezes and fog layers funnel inland through the Russian River gorge and settle in the low bottomlands that spread out in this watershed.

This vineyard yields wines that are full of rich, ripe, hedonistic fruit flavors, while also exhibiting a more sophisticated and subtle finish, with notes of tobacco, chocolate, and baking spices. It is a vineyard that really highlights the importance of letting the vines find their own balance. The vines here tend towards a high level of youthful vigor, sending out shoots full of greenery, creepers, and tendrils. While a textbook approach to vineyard management might call for aggressive hedging of this tendency, we find that the fruit produced is in balance and harmony. And the quality of the fruit is the final word on the farming.