History
Rancho Jabali passed from the Peake family to Richard Sanford, who bought it in 1982, and then into Alma Rosa. In 2013 the ranch was divided: Robert Zorich took half, including the El Jabali vineyard, into Alma Rosa, and the Wagners took the other half with the historic shack on it. Vines went in during 2012 with Coastal Vineyard Care, the first harvest came in 2016, and the winery opened to the public in May 2019. Mike Anderson, who spent some thirty years at the University of California's Oakville research station, manages the vineyard. Paul Lato made the debut 2014 estate wines before Peake Ranch had a winemaker of its own; Wynne Solomon has held that role since 2018.
The Site
About fifty planted acres inside a 105 acre property on Santa Rosa Road, at the southeastern end of the appellation. This is one of its warmer pockets: a saddle in the land shelters the vineyard from the worst of the Pacific wind that defines sites further west. Slopes face north, south, east and west across the property, which the estate describes as a dizzying array of aspects, and the soils vary with them, clay-dominant in places and sandy on the south-facing ground. No elevation figure is published.
Vines and Blocks
Four varieties: Pinot Noir across seven clones, Chardonnay across three, and Syrah and Grenache with two clones each. No internal blocks are named. The Wagners' other holdings matter to how the estate wines are made, since the family also owns John Sebastiano Vineyard five miles north in the eastern Sta. Rita Hills, which supplies their Syrah, and half of Sierra Madre in the Santa Maria Valley, which supplies their Chardonnay. Across the three properties they farm around 370 acres and sell roughly ninety-five percent of the fruit.
The Wines
Peake Ranch bottles Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and a Syrah-Grenache blend called Bellis Noir from the estate. Paul Lato's Ma Jolie is his Peake Ranch Chardonnay and has come from this vineyard in every vintage from 2018 onward. Production ran to about 4,200 cases as of 2019, and the wines carry the warmth of the saddle: rounder and more openly fruited than the cold western sites.