The Vines

Home Base, the vineyard behind our name, as 16600 is the address of the family estate. The small estate vineyard is carved out of a rocky bluff 1000 feet above downtown Sonoma. The vineyard is head-trained in the gobelet style and planted exclusively to heritage clone Zinfandel. The rocky terraces bask in afternoon sun, while the vines dig deep looking for soil and water. The result is the distinctive Estate Zinfandel, ripe and lush but peppered with minerality and zip.

Dos Limones, the vineyard where it all began, this is the first place Phil farmed organically beginning in 1978. The vineyard sits about halfway up Sonoma Mountain on the west side of Sonoma Valley in an area where Meyer Lemons were once the dominant commercial crop. When Enterprise Vineyard crews arrived at the site for the first time, they found two volunteer lemon trees in the middle of the vineyard and started calling it Dos Limones, the name has few owners and a major replant in the mid-90’s. We produce Syrah and Zinfandel from this site.

“Nestled” might be the single most overused word in vineyard descriptions but is unavoidably apt in describing the Simons Vineyard which is nestled into a rocky basin high up in the Moon Mountain District. This vineyard has everything that we look for in a great cabernet site: mountain top elevation, extreme rocky volcanic soil and southwest exposure all tempered by the microclimate of a cool, basin valley.

Few places are more important to the Coturri Family than the Rossi Ranch. Phil first worked here in the 1970’s, beginning his career helping Val Rossi harvest his vineyard. It was the harvest of 1977 when Arden, a young hippie from New Jersey, showed up looking for work. She picked grapes that day and also met her future husband; a hippie dirt farmer named Phil. It’s not surprising that Phil jumped at the opportunity to return there in 2013 and now the Rossi Ranch wines headline our offerings from Sixteen 600.

At the north end of Sonoma Valley, the valley narrows and the cold wind and fog from the Santa Rosa Plain overpowers its slower, thicker cousin, Karl the Fog, that creeps up the Valley from the San Francisco Bay. Here, the great great granddaughter of John Deere, Damaris Deere Ford, planted a vineyard in 1988 and named it Steel Plow in homage to her metal forging ancestor. The Steel Plow Vineyard sits in the convergence of these two costal influences, basking in the cool air in the mornings but enjoying the sunshine first as the fog recedes to the south and north. These climatic forces combine with the rocky soils formed from the detritus of Sugar Loaf Mountain, which towers over the vineyard to the northeast, to create ideal growing conditions for Grenache and other Rhône Varietals.

Heads spun when a hippie organic farmer from Sonoma was hired to manage and redevelop one Napa’s most storied vineyard sites. However, with its perch at the highest point in Oakville District and red volcanic soil littered with fractured basaltic and massive rhyolitic boulders, Oakville ranch Vineyard was the perfect place for Phil to plant his flag in Napa Valley. Most of the 70 acres of vineyard are planted to Cabernet, but tucked away in on the far edge of the vineyard sits a “deep V” valley where Phil planted Grenache with a smattering of Mourvedre.

Beginning in 2014 Muchas Piedras, Spanish for ‘many rocks’ has been transformed from a scraggly dying block of Zinfandel to a modern version of the California field blend. Head trained Grenache dominate the insanely rocky 2-acre plot with a few long rows of Mourvedre and a handful of Alicante Bouschet scattered about for color and texture.