Our Vineyards
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During the 1880s, Italian American homesteaders planted the first vines on the 120-acre Long Vineyards parcel. Prior to Prohibition, 20 acres of Zinfandel provided grapes for St. Helena wineries and, apparently, during Prohibition for black-market brandy. When Chris and Bob Long, Sr. purchased the property in 1966, we found parts of old stills buried in debris piles along with hundreds of bottles and jugs, and old timers in St. Helena recalled for us stories of the streams of buyers from San Francisco and Oakland who came looking for brandy and wine made in these hillsides.
By the end of Prohibition, the Zinfandel vineyards had died out, and the land was planted to hay, prunes and walnuts, which was what we found when we bought the property. At that time, U.C. Davis was just beginning to research the effects of micro-climates and soil composition on grape quality.
Long Vineyards Estate Micro-Climate
Spread out over rolling hills that vary from 700-1200 feet elevation, the general lay of the land is to the northwest, giving us lower heat and light. The reservoir, Lake Hennessey, lies to the northwest about a mile away. The prevailing Pacific Coast westerly winds blow across the lake and provide additional cooling. The air movement up and down our slopes, typical of mid-hillside locations gives us further cooling in the summer and a warming effect in the winter and spring - sparing us the risk of frost early in the growing season. This makes for an earlier bud-break, which tends to lengthen our growing season.
If we did not have the lake, and if we were turned more to the west or south, it would probably be too warm to grow Chardonnay and Riesling. In short, we have a longer, cooler growing season than the surrounding areas and this is essential to the development of the distinctive flavors and aromas of Long Vineyards wines.
Long Vineyards land is basically rocky with great variation in loam clay and shale deposits. The land was formed by ancient rivers that wore away the range of mountains that form the eastside of Napa Valley and extend east to the Sacramento Valley. Old landslides, triggered by earthquakes and volcanoes, covered these river-worn hillsides with rocky rubble. Pine and redwood forests grew on the slopes, followed by the oak and scrub pine forests of today. Over hundreds of thousands of years, leaf fall, fires and more erosion deposited the soil that has worked its way into the rocky crevices.
This is the perfect soil for the St. George rootstock, on which our vines are planted. The dry rocky terrain tempers St. George's tendency to be too vigorous, producing low crop levels. The winter rains soak the rocks in the soil, and although we have some irrigation water, it is this capacity of the soil to store winter water and slowly release it in summer that allows our vineyard to flourish.
Long Vineyards Pinot Grigio
Carneros-Laird Family Vineyard
Planted in the southern part of the Sonoma Carneros on silty soils deposited by the weathering of the hills on the margins of Sonoma Valley, the Laird Vineyard is influenced by the fog pulled in from the San Pablo Bay in the evenings and the moderated warm days of the hills to the north.
Row direction was chosen to provide afternoon sun protection for the fruit to help keep the delicate aroma and mouth-feel of the Pinot Grigio grapes. The underlying clay soils provide late-season protection from excessive water stress while providing mid-palate richness to the fruit.
The combination of cool mornings and warm enough day temperatures allows the grapes to achieve full ripeness and to preserve the delicate and rich flavors, with low enough sugar and high enough acid.
Long Vineyards Sangiovese
Sonoma County - Seghesio Vineyards
The Seghesio Sangiovese Vineyard is a third generation of the selection of vine propagation from the original cuttings brought from Italy by Edoardo Seghesio in 1895. Edoardo's bundle of old-world cuttings were a classical Italian mixture of different clones of Sangiovese. Over the generations the family has selected the small-berried and intensely flavored clones from the mother vineyards and has propagated these into new plantings.
The block of grapes that Long Vineyards gets each year is planted in the Alexander Valley less than 100 yards from the current course of the Russian River. Over the many hundreds of years of the past, the Russian River's course has wondered across the valley floor and deposited gravel beds and then overlaid these with fine sandy loam soils.
These very well drained soils force the vines to penetrate deeply to find late-season moisture. The combination of the small-berried vine selection and the gravel and sandy soils allow for very intensely flavored Sangiovese. The clones that were selected from the original vineyards are unique in California for their intensity of characters. They produce Sangiovese that is refined and elegant, yet exhibits an unusual depth.