History
Gard Hellenthal and his neighbour David Hirsch went looking for vineyard land north of Cazadero in the late 1970s, an unlikely search at the time. Hellenthal planted in 1980. Ceritas is the exclusive bottler of the Old Shop Block, and the Hellenthal family also farms the neighbouring Elliott vineyard, which Ceritas bottles separately as its own monopole rather than as a block of this one.
The Site
High ridge country north of Cazadero on fractured, deeply decomposed sandstone, inside the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA. The legal parcel runs to 148.75 acres and is classified as pasture by the county, so the planted portion is a small fraction of the land.
Vines and Blocks
The Old Shop Block is the heart of it: own-rooted, dry-farmed Calera-selection Pinot Noir planted in 1980 and now well over forty years old. Own roots matter here, since almost nothing planted in that decade escaped grafting.
The Wines
Ceritas bottles the Old Shop Block as a monopole, and separately bottles Elliott from the neighbouring ground the same family farms.