Ravenswood Pickberry Vineyards 2013 | Bordeaux Red Blend
The Ravenswood Pickberry Vineyards 2013 is a powerfully structured wine. Impressive with scents of dark cherry, dark berry, plum, mocha and vanilla aromas. With its complex, round layered texture, it coats the palate with intoxicating flavors of black plum, cassis, currants, spice and toast. This wine is built to last well into the next decade. The Ravenswood Pickberry Vineyards 2013 is a wonderfully balanced wine with a lingering finish. Winemaker Joel Peterson aka The Godfather of Zin does it again.
Winemaker Joel Peterson | The Godfather of Zin
In 1976 Winemaker Joel Peterson founded Ravenswood in partnership with fellow wine lover Reed Foster, a Harvard MBA who handled the green stuff while Joel oversaw the red stuff. Joel had dual careers in the ensuing years, working nights and weekends in the lab as he built the winery during the daylight hours. In 1977, he’d left his job in San Francisco and moved to Sonoma to work in the clinical lab at Sonoma Valley Hospital. He didn’t quit that job until 1992, a few years after the winery turned its first profit and Robert Parker pronounced Ravenswood wines “first class – bold, dramatic and complex.”
Today, Joel works with 100+ northern California growers who provide grapes for Ravenswood, consulting on irrigation methods, cultivation practices, cropping levels and a slew of other vineyard management issues. This attention in the field, coupled with the fact that Ravenswood is one of the few wineries that has had the philosophical and winemaking skill of one winemaker for over 30 years, contributes to a consistency of quality and style rarely found in California.
Along the way, the raven maven dubbed “the Godfather of Zin” built a legacy enjoying wine with grins and gusto.
Pickberry Vineyards
Not long after Cris and Lorna graduated, they got married, moved to San Francisco, and had a couple of kids. In Haight-Ashbury, where they first lived, it was the Summer of Love. But Cris and Lorna knew they hated the fog that blew in from the Pacific Ocean each day. Exploring north of the Golden Gate for a sunnier spot, they found a place on the north side of Sonoma Mountain. Hence, e spending weekends there in a trailer, building a cabin and picking blackberries. Before long, their two toddlers started calling it “the pick berry place. Since Cris was a home winemaker, they decided to plant Chardonnay grapes. However, because Cris had a weakness for Bordeaux, they planted Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot also.
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When the vines started producing, Cris and Lorna got a call from a local vintner, Joel Peterson. Joel knew that good Cabernet came from the north side of Sonoma Mountain. Ravenswood’s first “Pickberry” wine was called “one of the most important wines of the vintage. Receiving, as a result, a 90+ rating from Robert M. Parker Jr. Pickberry has become one of Ravenswood’s most prestigious wines.