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Parmelee-Hill Vineyard
Sonoma Valley
Steve Hill called me about taking Syrah around 2002. At the time I wasn’t ready to expand production but I did get to know the vineyard in the role of consulting winemaker for another winery when we started to make Chardonnay from his vineyard in 2003. Steve wears many hats; one being manager of the Durell Vineyard and another managing the acres he bought/leased from the original Durell ranch. These 2 vineyards supply more than 20 wineries with particularly high quality Chardonnay, Pinot noir and Syrah and their winery partner roster reads like a who’s who of ultra premium wineries. The vineyard is located just south west of Sonoma on the Carneros/Sonoma Valley boundary, a cool site well suited to the varieties mentioned. Steve also uses a small amount of the fruit he farms for his Parmelee-Hill label (Parmelee being his wife’s maiden name) and he has more information about the vineyard on his website www.sonomasyrah.com
A chance encounter with the Saxon Brown Parmelee-Hill Syrah in 2005 encouraged me ask for some Syrah prior to the 2005 harvest. The area of the vineyard I liked most was on the old river bottom, a site covered with big round river stones that had been smoothed down over the centuries. This gives the soil excellent drainage but its quite the drive through the vineyard, bouncing over the stones and avoiding the rock walls lining the vineyard that use countless stones pulled out over the years. For this reason I call it the River Rock Block (much better than Steve’s HV6D!). The vineyard is planted with Syrah cuttings now know as “Durell clone” that Steve believes is Australian cuttings taken from UC Davis. The vines are cordon trained and in this site have quite large bunches, necessitating leaving just 1 bunch per cane and removal of the bunch wings, all in order to make the fruit more uniform and concentrated.
Beginning in 2007 I also began to get a small amount of Chardonnay from a hillside block that faces out to the north-east, looking out over other famous Chardonnay sources and a nice red barn (my so called Red Barn Block). Meticulously farmed, its an early ripening block that is picked in early-mid September so that I can avoid mid season rains and the stress of waiting for the very late ripening Hawk Hill Chardonnay to come in.
