Another notable stop on our Paso Robles tour was Turley Wine Cellars. My first experience with Turley was at The Girl and the Fig, an amazing "French country" restaurant in Sonoma where we dined a couple years ago. Larry Turley founded his namesake winery after he sold his share of Frog's Leap in Napa to focus on Zinfandel. Turley scours the entire state of California looking for the oldest Zinfandel vines, making 23 different bottlings of Zin plus 5 bottlings of Petite Sirah. His Zin blends include the best blocks from the vineyards, and within those blocks the best grapes are bottled as single vineyard designates. All of the vineyards they source from are organic or in the process of becoming certified organic, all yeasts used in fermentation are natural, and the wines are unfined and unfiltered.
Turley Ueberroth Vineyard Zinfandel 2011 comes from their oldest vineyard of 18 acres planted in 1885 in Paso Robles. The vines are ungrafted and head-trained on very steep limestone soils. The high pH of the soil translate into a high-acid wine. I found it to be beautifully complex, with a nose of barnyard/hay, spring flowers in bloom and salty air with brambly fruit and earth on the palate.
I also enjoyed the Turley Hayne Vineyard Petite Syrah 2005 from Napa Valley (they spell it 'Syrah' rather than 'Sirah'), which had a great blueberry nose and boisenberry palate, with nice structure, firm tannin, and brambly complexity. Planted in 1953, the Hayne Vineyard is dry-farmed and head-trained.
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| Old head-trained vines on the Turley property in Paso Robles |
In addition to the Paso Robles tasting room, Turley recently opened one in the hills of Amador County, where they source a lot of fruit. Perhaps this will be our next trip?
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