History
Jordan, then Turley's winemaker with Rhone years under Jean-Luc Colombo behind him, founded the label with his wife Anne-Marie Failla, first vintage 1998 as Failla Jordan, shortened to Failla in 2002 after a naming dispute. The first estate blocks went in during the late 1990s with first fruit in 1999, a contiguous parcel joined in 1998, and five more acres were planted in 2002 and grafted to Pinot Noir the following year.
The Site
Eleven acres of vines on a 92 acre ranch off Bohan Dillon Road above Cazadero, at 1,000 to 1,400 feet, about two and a half miles from the Pacific inside Fort Ross-Seaview. The farming is organic and dry, the vineyard floor sitting just above the appellation's 920 foot fog-line threshold.
Vines and Blocks
Pinot Noir and Chardonnay with a small 1,400 foot Syrah block from 1998.
The Wines
The Estate Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and a rare Estate Syrah, 146 cases in a recent vintage, carry the Fort Ross-Seaview designation: taut, saline wines that anchor a range otherwise built on the coast's great grower sites.