History
Giuseppe Martinelli, nineteen, and Luisa Vellutini, sixteen, eloped from their Tuscan village in the early 1880s; Giuseppe was hired to plant a vineyard for a Forestville farmer, then bought his own land and planted this hill. Their son Leno famously worked it from age twelve until his late eighties. The vineyard has never been terraced, and its Zinfandel is bottled by the family as the flagship of the estate.
The Site
Three acres on a forest-locked clearing above the Martinelli Road homestead, on Franciscan shale with almost no topsoil. Field measurement puts the grade above forty percent, commonly cited as the steepest non-terraced vineyard in Sonoma County. The parcel has carried the family's tax basis since before Proposition 13, a paper trail of unbroken ownership.
Vines and Blocks
Head-trained, dry-farmed Zinfandel more than a century old, with two hidden rows of Muscat of Alexandria whose fruit goes to a family dessert bottling.
The Wines
Jackass Hill Zinfandel is among California's most distinctive wines: massive ripeness off ancient vines, yet balanced by hillside acidity and the iron of pure shale, made in tiny quantities and long allocated.