History
The site was originally known as Pronsolino, after one of the immigrant families who worked this ridge alongside the Frati, Tovani, Giusti and Giovanetti households, and growers who propagate from it still use both names. Jed Steele made the first DuPratt Zinfandel at Edmeades in 1974 and carried the wine into his Kendall-Jackson years, and the Edmeades single-vineyard programme built the vineyard's reputation through the 1990s. Mike Officer of Carlisle became the principal buyer after that; his last DuPratt was the 2018, and Carlisle announced in July 2024 that it would stop making wine altogether after that harvest. Parts of an old wine press remain on the property, though the 1997 petition attributes the nearby standing winery to the neighbouring Ciapusci family rather than to the DuPratts. The vineyard is not on the Historic Vineyard Society register, despite comfortably qualifying on age.
The Site
The vines occupy a southwest-facing ridge top on Greenwood Ridge, five miles from the Pacific, ringed by redwoods and old apple trees. Published elevations give 1,400, 1,500 and 1,600 feet depending on block and source. The 1,200-foot contour that defines Mendocino Ridge approximates the fog line, so the valleys below fill with cloud while these vines sit in sun above it, cooled by the marine air rather than shaded by it. Rain is heavy, over 60 inches in some years, and the growing season is long. Turley calls this the coolest site it has ever made wine from, and the Chardonnay is the last that Steele picks in any vintage.
Vines and Blocks
Two blocks carry two appellations between them. The old Zinfandel is head-trained, dry-farmed and own-rooted, phylloxera having never climbed this ridge; Steele puts it at about five and a half acres, and Carlisle dated the parcel it bought from to 1920 rather than the vineyard's headline 1916. Five acres of Wente-selection Chardonnay followed in 1983, on Franciscan sandstone. The Zinfandel is labelled Mendocino Ridge while the Chardonnay has usually gone out as Anderson Valley, and both are correct rather than careless, because the 1997 petition conceded that a segment of Mendocino Ridge overlaps Anderson Valley along its northeastern boundary and DuPratt sits inside that overlap. Nor is the choice fixed, since Hartford Court labels its Chardonnay off the same block Mendocino Ridge. A neighbouring ridge grower calls this the only virus-free old-vine Zinfandel in California; whatever the truth of that, the DuPratt selection entered the UC Davis Zinfandel heritage collection and reached commercial nurseries, and Sonoma's Fredericks vineyard was replanted partly from it in 2008.
The Wines
Carlisle's bottlings were tiny and exact: 322 cases in 2017 at 2.9 tons to the acre, 354 in 2018 at just under two, both picked in October and bottled unfined and unfiltered after mostly used French oak. Turley has made the Zinfandel through at least the 2020 vintage, Steele has bottled both varieties, Copain made the Chardonnay through at least 2022, and Hartford Court released a 2024. The Zinfandel remains the argument for the place, because a century-old own-rooted planting five miles from the ocean gives something narrower and more savoury than the variety manages on warmer ground.