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Hawk Hill Vineyard
Russian River Appellation
This is an outstanding vineyard located just a few miles from the ocean and inland from the town of Bodega (near Freestone). Owned by Paul and Vicki Michalczyk and planted to both Chardonnay and Pinot noir, this south facing hillside vineyard is a challenging place to grow grapes because of the fog and cold weather. The results are well worth the effort and it has rapidly become a source of outstanding Chardonnay for other great wineries. I had the opportunity to source fruit from this vineyard starting in 2001 and soon found myself dealing with the best Chardonnay grapes I’d ever seen. While Chardonnay seems to be capable of producing good wines in many places, it only seems to scale great heights in those cooler areas where crop yields must be kept tightly in check and long cool growing seasons result in concentrated fruit flavors and bright acids.
I love the white wines that rely upon concentration of flavor and bright acid without the heavy reliance on oak, and I feel wines need a backbone of acid to work with food. To make such a wine means getting fruit of the caliber of that provided by Hawk Hill. Grown in the light and sandy Goldridge soil, this vineyard has excellent soil drainage that allows the vines to be appropriately stressed. Fog and wet conditions have an absolute requirement for grape exposure to the sun and wind to keep rot and mildew at bay. Add the cool conditions that lead to long hang time (the vineyard is one of the coldest sites for grapes in Sonoma County and is often picked in November!) and we have all the elements for great wine. It just takes a committed grower to deal with the birds, gophers, fog and cold to complete the picture.
