History
Homesteaded in the 1880s, the land was bought in 1906 by three French settlers, who planted grapes and made wine until Prohibition in 1920. Justin Lacau bought it in 1935 and named it Frenchie's Ranch; a San Jose timber family logged it after 1967. Bradley Brown took on the neglected property in 1998, planted the first block, Rattlesnake Rock, to Syrah in 2000 with John Alban advising, made a first vintage in 2002 and built the winery in 2003 from estate redwood. Old Corral was Syrah before it was Pinot Noir, bottled as such through 2014 and grafted over after that harvest. In August 2020 the CZU Lightning Complex burned through. Brown's house was destroyed and the winery survived, but the vineyard was badly scorched, with vines lost or damaged and about 600 replanted, though the Old Corral block came through largely intact. The 2020 crop was picked and made into wine, but the smoke taint never resolved and Brown dumped the vintage in 2025. Blake Yarger makes the wines now.
The Site
Lookout Ridge divides the Boulder Creek and San Lorenzo Valley drainages, and the estate abuts Big Basin Redwoods State Park, more than ninety percent of it forest. Most of the planted ground faces west and southwest, while Old Corral lies over the far side of the ridge on a rocky south to southeast face. Terraces are cut into slopes of fifteen to thirty five percent, and the Pinot blocks run from about 1,258 to 1,400 feet on sandy clay loam sixteen inches deep over fractured mudstone, shale and sandstone. Nights are foggy and afternoons windy, which stretches ripening and holds acidity. The Santa Cruz Mountains AVA was drawn in 1981 on the fog line, 400 feet on the ocean side and 800 on the bay, well below these vines. Farming is organic and CCOF certified, and irrigation runs two or three times a year.
Vines and Blocks
Three blocks make the Pinot Noir. The namesake Old Corral block went in during 2006 at eight by three foot spacing and carries the Swan selection. Boulder and Rocky followed in 2007, both facing south, budded to the Mount Eden selection, clone 37, in 2014. Boulder is planted at five by three around boulders large enough that it must be farmed by hand. The rest of the ten acres is Rhone. Rattlesnake Rock, planted from 2000 at 1,300 to 1,400 feet, carries Alban Syrah selections with Viognier and a little Pinot Noir in clone 122 and Chambertin. 42 Terraces is Syrah again from Alban's Power Block selection, planted in 2007, and Homestead Grenache and Roussanne from Alban field selections.
The Wines
Old Corral is fermented whole cluster on native yeast after a cold soak of up to a week and held fifteen to thirty days on skins, then spends eighteen months in French oak, is racked once and bottled unfined and unfiltered. Volumes move with the vintage: 265 cases in 2019 at 13 percent alcohol, 172 in 2022. The wine sits at the lighter, more perfumed end of the Big Basin range, red fruited and floral, the stem tannin working as structure rather than weight, and reviews from the first vintage on say much the same.