History
The vines went in around 2007, four years before the Wenzlaus bought the property; no source records who planted them. The family were wine drinkers first, Burgundy travellers who came to Santa Barbara often, and the push to buy a vineyard is credited to their son Tommy qualifying as a sommelier. They bottle a small estate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay under their own name with Justin Willett of Tyler and Lieu Dit making the wine, including a Chardonnay called The Drawing Board that their sons Tommy and Grant blended themselves. Farming is organic in practice, with cover cropping, composting, hand work and minimal irrigation, though sources disagree about which management company does the work.
The Site
Twelve and a half planted acres inside a hundred acre property, about seven miles from the Pacific at the western edge of the appellation. The orientation is southwest into a canyon, and the vineyard splits naturally into two pieces at different heights. Sanford and Benedict lies directly across the river; Sea Smoke, Mount Carmel and Rita's Crown are the neighbours on this side. The lower ground fronting the Santa Ynez River is silty with river rock through it, described in one producer's notes as a Sorento loam. No elevation figure is published for the site, which is a gap for a vineyard this well regarded.
Vines and Blocks
Two sections, named for where they sit rather than for anything grander. The Lower Vineyard runs about five acres of Chardonnay on the silt and river rock along the river frontage. The Upper Vineyard holds roughly seven and a half acres of Pinot Noir, reached up a steep canyon, and is reported to be mostly clones 115 and 667 with a little 2A. Sources split on the exact division between the two, giving either five and seven and a half acres or five and a half and seven. Rootstock and spacing are not published.
The Wines
The estate label is tiny and sold by mailing list. The vineyard's wider reputation rests on Racines, the project of Etienne de Montille, Brian Sieve and Rodolphe Peters, which has bottled a Wenzlau Family Vineyard Chardonnay annually for years and farms its own block organically. Outside those two the designate is rare, which makes Wenzlau the opposite of a site like Rita's Crown: a small vineyard with a short list of hands on it. Jeb Dunnuck has scored the estate wines in the low nineties, calling the Pinot Noir elegant and seamless and the Chardonnay lively and mineral.