Giacomo and Louise Isola immigrated from Italy in the beginning of the
twentieth century. By 1910 they had
found their way to California, dropped the I in favor of an E in the spelling
of their last name, and bought a 226-acre ranch for all of $99. In the winter of 1939/1940, with the help of
their two sons, John and Ernie, they planted the Zinfandel vineyard responsible
for this wine.
In what seems like a previous life, I used to walk through this
vineyard on my way to work. At the time,
early 1980s, I worked at Montevina (Terra Del Oro today) and I lived just
across the street from where Margie and I have built our winery. As I traveled across the valley twice a day,
walking through the Esola Vineyard, I never suspected that I would someday use
the old, gnarled Zinfandel vines to make wine for my own label.
Today, the granddaughter of Giacomo and Louise, daughter of Lena and
Ernie; Denise Esola farms this vineyard.
Denise adheres to her family’s traditional farming methods and she is
one of the last ‘dry farming’ holdouts here in the valley. She refuses to augment the winter rainfall with
irrigation and is adamant about the resulting wine quality. The secret to
making wine from dry farmed grapes is harvesting at just the right moment and
lucky for us the vineyard is just a short walk from the winery. So, in late August or Early September, I get
to stroll a familiar path to monitor the ripening of these grapes and with
Denise determine our harvest date.
