History
Turley and her husband John Wetlaufer bought their roughly 40 acre parcel in the mid 1980s and began planting in the early 1990s, neighbors to the Martinellis, whose winemaker Turley became in 1992 and at whose winery the early Marcassin wines were made. Alongside the estate wines she made the famous Blue Slide Ridge and Three Sisters bottlings from Martinelli fruit, then committed Marcassin to its own vineyard alone. Marcassin built its own winery in Windsor, begun in 2010 and completed in 2011.
The Site
About twenty planted acres of the ranch parcel at roughly 1,200 feet on the second ridge from the Pacific, ground whose Pinot convinced more than one neighbor, Ehren Jordan among them, to buy nearby.
Vines and Blocks
Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, farmed to Turley's famously exacting low-yield standard.
The Wines
The Marcassin Vineyard Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are released years behind the vintage to a mailing list that effectively never opens: opulent, long-lived wines that made the extreme Sonoma Coast's reputation before the appellation had a name.