When you come to the edge of civilization in the mountains of the Sonoma Coast, and the road crumbles to dirt and stone, and just as the GPS fails and you're looking for a place to turn around and head back home, you're almost at Blue Slide Ridge Vineyard.
It's a path the Martinelli family knows well. On a morning in April, three generations of Martinellis are riding in an SUV as it treads up to a summit about 1,100 feet above the Pacific Ocean. At the wheel is Lee Jr.; Lee Sr. sits in the back with his granddaughter Tessa Gorsuch and winemaker Courtney Wagoner.
After weeks of dark skies and storms, the land is green and glowing in the sun as everyone climbs out of the vehicle after the 90-minute trek from Martinelli Winery outside Santa Rosa, Calif. We're in the heart of the family's Sonoma Coast property in the Fort Ross-Seaview appellation, where four vineyards sit in proximity: Charles Ranch, Three Sisters, Wild Thyme and Blue Slide. Gorsuch opens a bottle of Three Sisters Pinot Noir 2021 and pours a taste all around. A taste of Blue Slide soon follows.
"I get winemakers asking me all the time if there's any Blue Slide for sale," Wagoner says. "No, I get 100%,' I reply, so a lot of them are jealous. This is a very special place, Blue Slide in particular. It gives [the wine] an intensity, but it's an approachable intensity and the age-ability of it is just incredible."
Lee Sr., a spry 84 who looks a decade younger, takes it all in. He has been making the long drive up the mountain since he was a young man courting his future wife, Carolyn Charles Martinelli, who grew up on this remote 465-acre wilderness that the Charles family homesteaded in the 1860s. "This ranch produced lumber and livestock back in the day," Lee Sr. says. "And now it's grapes."
Esta historia es de la edición September 30, 2023 de Wine Spectator.
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Esta historia es de la edición September 30, 2023 de Wine Spectator.
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