History
The vineyard was planted in the 1930s and never pulled out. Its residential owners kept it while the surrounding bench was cleared and replanted to Cabernet, which is how a pre-Prohibition style field blend came to survive inside the most expensive vineyard ground in Napa. Bedrock Wine Co. now farms and bottles it, and the Historic Vineyard Society, whose listing Morgan Twain-Peterson submitted, calls it the oldest remaining vineyard in the appellation.
The Site
A single-acre home lot at 140 feet on the west side of Highway 29, in the middle of the Oakville AVA and effectively inside the To Kalon complex. The soil is deep, structured Bale clay loam, which holds enough winter moisture for old un-irrigated trunks to draw on through the dry months.
Vines and Blocks
One unified field parcel rather than a set of blocks, interplanted vine by vine. The genetic centre is Negrette, known in nineteenth-century Napa as Crabb's Black Burgundy, the variety H.W. Crabb singled out as his favourite among the hundreds he grew next door at To Kalon. Around it stand Mondeuse, Zinfandel, Petite Sirah and Carignan, with French Colombard, Chenin Blanc, Semillon and Malvasia Bianca scattered among the reds. Everything is head-trained, free-standing and picked at once.
The Wines
Bedrock's Oakville Farmhouse is co-fermented whole, whites included, which is what keeps it light on its feet: red raspberry, blood orange and white pepper at a weight that reads nothing like its neighbours.