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Bald Mountain Vineyard – Bonny Doon California:
This is the largest vineyard in our collection. At 38 acres, it
is the largest vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It is predominantly
Chardonnay (UC Davis Clone 4). In the spring of 2005 the Beauregards
grafted in Pinot Noir. This 9 acre area of the vineyard now has
3 acres of Clone 777, 3 acres of Pommard, and 3 acres of Mt. Eden Clone. The
Mt. Eden and the Pommard Clone came from Hirsch Vineyard on the Sonoma
Coast. Hirsch got these same clones from Jim Beauregard who set
him up with them over 30 years ago:
(from Wine Enthusiast, 2003)
...Hirsch, now 56, had made some money and was looking for some “elbow
room” to live in. He decided on the Sonoma Coast “because
it was unsettled. I wanted to buy a big piece of land, and it was cheap.” Hirsch
knew nothing about grapes, but he was friends with the owner of the old,
Santa Cruz-based Felton-Empire winery. (Felton-Empire’s Late Harvest
Rieslings were famous in their day.) One day, the owner Jim Beauregard,
came to visit Hirsch. Hirsch recalls, “[He] comes up here to this
place with no electricity and very suspect roads, and he walks around,
looks at me, and says, ‘Plant Pinot Noir here, and this will be
a very famous vineyard.’ And so,” Hirsch smiles, “the
very next day, I did.”
Beauregard was prescient. Hirsch planted his first grapes in 1980; today,
he follows the Sonoma Coast pattern: He makes no wine of his own, but
sells grapes to wineries including Kistler, Williams-Selyem, Littorai
and Siduri, who bottle his Pinot Noirs with the Hirsch Vineyard designation.
The history of
the Mt. Eden clone goes back farther than this though; this bud wood
is the same Pinot Noir that was used by Martin Ray, Paul Mason, and as
rumor has it the Louis Latour’s Burgundian vineyards. Paul
Mason was a French Man from Burgundy who chose this clone to farm here
in the Santa Cruz Mountains 120 years ago.
• Click here to shop for wines from Bald Mountain Vineyard
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