History
Joe Rochioli Sr. began acquiring the 162-acre Westside Road property in 1938. After his father's death in 1966, Joe Rochioli Jr. pulled out the ranch's other crops and planted the first Pinot Noir here in 1968, at a time when nobody thought the variety worth the risk in this valley. Williams Selyem has bought Rochioli fruit since 1980 on a relationship that has outlasted several owners of that label. Tom Rochioli built the family winery in the early 1980s and has made the wine since; the first Rochioli-label vintage, the 1985, was named best Pinot Noir in America by Wine Spectator on release. Joe Rochioli Jr. died in 2022 at eighty-eight.
The Site
About 162 acres on Westside Road south of Healdsburg with roughly 140 planted, running from the river bench up onto the hillsides. Soils change with that rise, which is why the estate has always been farmed as separate blocks rather than one vineyard.
Vines and Blocks
The named blocks are the vocabulary of the place: East Block and West Block on the older ground, Three Corner planted in 1974 on land Howard Allen deeded across from the neighbouring Allen Vineyard, plus Little Hill, Big Hill and Sweetwater.
River Block is the flat alluvial bench beside the river and the most separately identified of them. Its Old River Block section was planted in 1989 from cuttings taken off the 1960s West Block vines. Williams Selyem bottles 11.6 acres of it as Rochioli Riverblock Vineyard, on Yolo sandy loam, farmed to clones 115 and 777 alongside Pommard and the estate's own East and West selections. It is a block of this vineyard rather than a vineyard of its own, and the two labels spell it differently.
The Wines
J. Rochioli's block-designated Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays are among the hardest wines in California to buy, and Williams Selyem's Rochioli bottlings run in parallel from the same ground.