Three Sticks Wines: Durell Vineyard
One of the things that The Three Sticks Wines Team loves about Durell Vineyard are the rocks and the different soil types. At Durell, they have everything from ancient riverbed, to volcanic and even sandy soils. What that does from a wine making perspective is it allows them to take all of those different soils, then take the different clones that they grow on those soils, and blend all of those different personalities together. It gives them a little bit more complexity to every wine that is made from this vineyard.
The Durell Vineyard sits on the western edge of the town of Sonoma. It actually spans three AVAs, The Sonoma Valley AVA, Sonoma Coast AVA, and The Carneros Line actually cuts right through the middle of the property. So about half of the Durell property also lies in Carneros. It is roughly 160 planted acres on about 600 acres of property. One of the unique special aspects of Durell is its place in American wine history. The initial plantings of Durell were right around 1977-1978.
What makes pinot noir special at Durell are the intersection of the Sonoma Coast, Sonoma Valley, as well as Carneros AVA’s. That allows for some of that cooling influence from the Petaluma Gap, which comes through in that Sonoma Coast region area. Sonoma Valley povides heat and sunshine, and from the Carneros region, there is a major influence from the Bay. All of those coming together creates a really unique wine and one that offers aspects of rich fruit and earthiness. It also creates a complex, different and unique version of a chardonnay, and one that Three Sticks Wines thinks is really special to our surrounding region.
Durell is special in a lot of ways. One of the things that's paramount or really important is that history not be the entire story. And that Three Sticks Wines continues to rewrite the story and be successful today and tomorrow, and not just yesterday.
