Three Sticks Wines: Walala Vineyard

Speaker 1:

The Walala Vineyard is wild. You take logging roads, you take the windy coastal highway, dirt roads over dilapidated bridges, and you arrive at this majestic place surrounded by 19,000 acres of redwood trees. The wines that come off of that embody that. There's this wildness. There's this spice. You've got the coast behind you and this gentle breeze always sort of flowing through all around you. It connects you to the land, and it connects you to Sonoma Coast.

One thing that's really unique about Walala is it sits up above the fog line. We're getting this inversion layer where it's a little bit warmer, even when it's really nasty out there on the coast, so the grapes can sort of push through and thrive. The Walala wine represents its place, I think, very well. Mostly it's planted to Dijon clones, and they do really well in really cool climates. The Walala Vineyard is getting that influence from the Pacific Ocean. It's getting that cooling breeze throughout the day. It has a little bit of a wildness to it. It has this great spice component that comes.

These Dijon clones, they sort of exemplify that sort of wildness that comes from being out there on the Sonoma Coast. It's probably the most weather-impacted vineyard that we have. You really see differences vintage to vintage, and we're seeing just a beautiful elegance, a little bit of levity to them. It's a nice interplay of that. It's a really magical place out there.