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Chapter One: Lay of the Land

Iron Horse is a marriage of two vineyards -- my family's property in Green Valley and Forrest's T-bar-T ranch in Alexander Valley. My parents and Forrest founded the winery in 1978. The grapes from the two estates come into the one winery and are bottled under the Iron Horse label.

The weather is coolest to the west, due to coastal fog, and becomes warmer as you head north and inland. It's about 20 miles to Forrest's property and about 10 degrees warmer than it is at home. The two vineyards are as different as night and day. Even the grapes are not interchangeable. We grow Chardonnay and Pinot Noir at the home vineyard and Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Sangiovese at T-bar-T. We couldn't get Cabernet to ripen properly at Iron Horse because of our cool climate, and Pinot Noir would probably explode from the heat at T-bar-T. This climate variation is what allows us to make such a broad range of wines.

We now have 250 acres in vine. We are completely estate bottled, which means we use our own grapes exclusively, producing about 40,000 cases of wine a year. We used to tease Forrest that we could only be as big as however many acres he could walk. Now he has to run.

No two years are alike in the vineyards. Standing behind the winery, looking at the lay of the land, you can see why one side of a hill will yield a completely different taste than the other because of its exposure to the sun, the way the water sheds, or the way the fog settles. Blocks A, B, and C at the foot of the property are often our favorites for still Chardonnay because they lie on a west-facing incline and receive the last rays of sunlight at the end of the day. Different soil types run in bands or ribbons all around the property. What surprises me is how the same section of vineyard will taste different from one year to the next -- not just in a good vintage versus a bad one but in two equally fine years. They're just different in the same way that a bed of flowers doesn't replicate itself petal for petal each time it blooms.

Copyright © 1996 by Joy Sterling