History
Bewley planted from 1993 and expanded to roughly a hundred and forty acres of vines carrying forty-three commercial varieties, an inventory no California grower of comparable seriousness attempts. The wines it feeds read as a list of producers who care about cold sites: Pax, Arnot-Roberts, Copain, Bedrock, Ridge, Ernest, Dirty and Rowdy, Kale, Relic, Las Jaras and Miner among them. Bewley has announced that farming will conclude after the 2026 harvest, which ends one of the more singular projects in northern California viticulture.
The Site
About a hundred and forty planted acres inside a six thousand acre ranch, running from 1,700 to 2,700 feet on steep Coast Range terrain, with the highest block, Spirit Rock, at the top of that range. The soils are fractured sandstone, gravelly and sparse, draining hard and holding vigour down. The vineyard sits north of both Mendocino Ridge and Eagle Peak and inside neither: Mendocino Ridge covers only coastal ridges above 1,200 feet running south from the Navarro River, and Eagle Peak sits between Ukiah and Willits. Alder Springs is twenty-three miles north-northwest of Willits, so its wines carry the plain Mendocino County appellation.
Vines and Blocks
Forty-three varieties, from the expected Syrah, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Grenache, Mourvedre and Chenin Blanc through to Petite Arvine, Mencia, Counoise, Pelaverga and Aligote. Spirit Rock at 2,700 feet is the named high block. The point of the planting was to find out which varieties belong on cold, high, fractured sandstone this far north, and the answer turned out to include a great many.
The Wines
Pax makes Syrah, Chenin Blanc, Grenache and Mourvedre here, and Arnot-Roberts, Ridge, Bedrock and a dozen others have bottled the vineyard's fruit. The house character across producers is the same: high acid, low alcohol and a savoury, peppery register that comes from ripening slowly at altitude in a cold corner of the state.