Vineyards

We’ve spent enough time around vineyards to know that good farming doesn’t come with one approved ritual. If yours requires a thousand-year-old pagan ceremony, a full moon, and skinny-dipping in a giant vat of low-fat chocolate pudding, go for it. Divinations with chicken entrails? Why not? We simply don’t give a shit. If it works, just be sure you have enough pudding and/or chickens.

What matters to us is the judgment behind it. We work with growers who know their land through years of observation, repetition, risk, and the kind of practical understanding that rarely needs a name. Many were farming sustainably before sustainability became a category or a sales pitch.

We know these vineyards through the people who farm them, the roads that lead to them, the weather that arrives each afternoon, and the way the fruit changes from one piece of ground to the next. Some of these relationships reach back to our earliest vintages. One is entirely new. Together, they keep us close to the part of winemaking that begins long before the fruit reaches the cellar.

Napa Valley

What more is there to say about Napa Valley? It’s Napa. Duh.

For us, the more interesting story begins beyond everything the name already carries. Cooper River gave us a reason to make the drive north, leave the familiar valley floor behind, and climb into the eastern mountains above Lake Hennessey. That road led to Sage Ridge, a new vineyard relationship and our first Napa Valley wine.

Much of Cooper River continues conversations with places we’ve known for years. Napa opened a new one. Our experience of the region begins with one rugged mountain vineyard, Cabernet Sauvignon, and the excitement of discovering what comes next.

Santa Lucia Highlands

The Santa Lucia Highlands rise along the eastern face of the Santa Lucia Range, above the broad floor of the Salinas Valley. Mornings arrive with fog. The sun breaks through, the wind gathers in the afternoon, and the fruit is given a long season to develop ripeness, texture, and freshness together.

We’ve known this region through many years and many wines, but our Cooper River story here centers on two vineyards farmed by the Franscioni family. Rosella’s surrounds the family home in the northern part of the appellation. Sierra Mar sits farther south and much higher, stretched across a series of mountain ridges.

They are two very different places connected by the same family. That matters to us. Great vineyards need more than the right climate and ground. They need people who know what they’re looking at and what to do next. Gary and his sons have that understanding. It comes from generations of farming, and we can taste the difference.

Graphite study of fog moving through the east–west transverse mountain ridges

Sta. Rita Hills

Sta. Rita Hills has been part of our working landscape for more than two decades. It’s also the place we call home. The vineyards are part of the roads we travel, the weather we watch, and the decisions that return with every harvest. Cooper River isn’t bringing us back to this region. It gives us another way to keep exploring a place that never left our lives.

The hills and valleys run east to west, opening a direct path toward the Pacific. Fog moves inland, the wind gathers, and afternoons rarely stay still. That marine influence slows the season and gives Pinot Noir and Chardonnay time to develop flavor while holding on to the acidity and energy that keep the wines alive.

We’ve never thought that cool-climate wine had to be quiet. Sta. Rita Hills can produce wines with depth, concentration, and real power. The climate doesn’t diminish those qualities. It gives them shape.

Vineyard rows folding across the mountain terrain at Sage Ridge above a bank of fog

Sage Ridge Vineyard

Sage Ridge sits high in the eastern mountains of Napa Valley, looking down over Lake Hennessey. The vineyard unfolds across steep ridges, terraces, changing elevations, and small pieces of ground that resist any simple description. It’s remote, rugged, and unlike any other place in the Cooper River story.

This is new ground for us. We source Cabernet Sauvignon from Clones 7 and 337, along with a small amount of Petit Verdot. The landscape produces wines of unbelievable intensity, with deeply concentrated fruit and a plushness that can be surprising for a mountain site.

Sage Ridge gave us our first Napa Valley wine and a new reason to get excited about Cabernet Sauvignon. There still aren’t enough superlative adjectives to describe how amazing the vineyard is. Believe us, we’ve tried.

Rosella’s Vineyard

Rosella’s has always felt like more than a vineyard name. It surrounds the Franscioni family home near Soledad, which makes the place and the people difficult to separate. That is part of what drew us here in the early 2000s, when Rosella’s and the Santa Lucia Highlands were beginning to command serious attention.

Those were exciting years. California Pinot Noir was discovering how ripe, generous, and expressive it could be without measuring itself against Burgundy. We were happy to push it. Rosella’s gave us perfume, silkiness, and pleasure, with more weight beneath it than the wine first let on.

Working with Rosella’s again isn’t an attempt to recreate those wines. We know the vineyard differently now, and we have more experience to bring to it. With Pinot Noir from the Pisoni Clone, along with Clone 96 Chardonnay, we get to follow two distinct paths through the same ground. The history matters, but so does the possibility of discovering what Rosella’s still has to show us.

Sierra Mar Vineyard

Sierra Mar is waaaaayyyy up on the hillside, farther south and much higher than Rosella’s. The vineyard stretches across a series of plateaus that cling to the tops of mountain ridges, fanning out above the Salinas Valley like the fingers of a hand. From up there, the Santa Lucia Highlands takes on a different shape. The land feels more exposed, the horizon gets wider, and the wind has nothing standing in its way.

We first got to know Sierra Mar through Chardonnay in 2009. That gave us our first reading of the vineyard before Pinot Noir became part of the story. It also extended a relationship with the Franscioni family that had already carried us through some of the most meaningful vineyards in our history.

For Cooper River, we’re working with Pisoni Clone Pinot Noir. The fruit has the generosity we love, but the vineyard gives it energy and definition. Our original words for the wine were “plush and exhilarating,” and we still haven’t found a better way to describe what this place makes possible.

The wrought-iron Clos Pepe gate at the vineyard entrance

Clos Pepe Vineyard

Clos Pepe entered our story in 2000, with our first Pinot Noir from the vineyard. Through Steve and Cathy Pepe, Wes and Chanda Hagen, and the many people gathered around each harvest, it became a place we knew in ordinary detail: the gate, the sloping blocks, the wind, the animals, and the long wait for the fruit to be ready.

The Clos sits in one of the coldest parts of the Sta. Rita Hills. The fruit hangs for an insanely long time, slowly developing huge flavors while holding on to stunning acidity. That combination gives the wines depth, persistence, and the kind of power we believe this region should rightfully be known for.

Pinot Noir defined most of our history here, but in 2005 we made a single Clos Pepe Chardonnay. We never turned it into a series, and the idea remained unfinished. Cooper River gives us the chance to take it up again, with more than two decades of experience in the vineyard between then and now. We called Clos Pepe transcendent and nearly mythic all those years ago. The words still fit.

California field study