Vineyard

Evangelho Vineyard

As a kid growing up in Contra Costa County, I had no idea that there were vineyards just on the other side of Mount Diablo.

Planted around 1890, Evangelho sits on pure Delhi Sand just about a mile south of the Sacramento River Delta directly where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers converge. This area is directly influenced by the Carquinez Strait, which is the gateway to the San Pablo Bay and Pacific Ocean. Each day as the interior valleys warm up, cool oceanic air is pulled in through the Strait, buffeting the vines with wind and moderating their temperature. The combination of sand, sunlight, mild temperatures and strong winds off the Pacific Ocean defines Evangelho's terroir. I have had the fortunate oppurtunity of overseeing this vineyard for Bedrock Wine Co. since 2016.

While this region was once heavily planted with vineyards and orchards, it now functions as a frontier of the Bay Area's suburban expansion. Evangelho is now one of a spattering of historic (many dry-farmed and own-rooted) vineyards that haven't been uprooted for housing or retail. For a wonderful piece of writing on Evangelho and its cultural context, Chris Howard's article is worth a read: https://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/wwc21-evangelho-california.

In 2017 myself and the Bedrock Wine Co. viticulture team mapped the entire 33-acre vineyard by variety. The field blend is made up of predominately Zinfandel, Mataro (Mourvedre) and Carignan, but interspersed throughout the planting are just over 100 Palomino vines. That same year, myself and a few willing friends made the weekend morning trip out to Antioch to pick this fruit and press it before the rest of the field was harvested. We've done it each year since, slowly building the Flor of Evangelho Solera one or two barrels at a time.

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