Wine & Spirits - April 2020 - 49

PINOT NOIR AT
CERISE VINEYARD ON
THE EAST RIDGE OF
ANDERSON VALLEY

able to ripen fruit, but we went for it anyway," he says. They
planted a vineyard there, outside Anderson Valley proper,
in 2011.
Drew also farms and produces pinot noir three miles
down the road at Valenti Ranch, on Anderson Valley's West
Ridge. He started purchasing fruit from the ranch in 2006,
when he was building his winery, then took over the lease
in 2013. The site carves into a steep east-facing slope, the
pinot noir blocks ranging in elevation from 1,200 to 1,400
feet. It's a mid-elevation zone like Lemon's site on the East
Ridge-the fog line below at 1,000 feet-with the added
elements of ancient oceanic soils and cool winds moving
in from the coast six miles west. Rises in temperature can
end here as early as 10 a.m., with the sunny yet cool conditions often delaying harvest to the first week of October.
Back at the winery, a flight of stairs from the barrel room
lead up to the loft where the Drew family lives. Jason heads
to the kitchen for wine glasses and starts pulling corks while
I take a seat at the farm table that's the focal point of the
room. They still have their Christmas tree up, dressed in
colorful tinsel, in the third week of January.
He brings out a 2017 Valenti Ranch, explaining that,
while the label reads "Mendocino Ridge," the site actually
overlaps with Anderson Valley, the border ending somewhere in those three miles before Drew's estate. He could
put that fruit into Fog-Eater, his Anderson Valley appellation blend, but he likes to label the vineyard-designate as
Mendocino Ridge to help distinguish its high elevation and
proximity to the coast.
If you taste the the Valenti Ranch side-by-side with Fog-

"The fruit
spectrum and
tannin
profile deepen
and intensify as
you go further
into Mendocino
Ridge, closer to
the coast."
- JASON DREW,
DREW WINES

Eater, it's easy to tell the difference: Valenti's red-purple
hue and lifted aromas of lacquered black cherry and fir tip
almost immediately set it apart; those notes continue with
a weighted brightness and velvety grip, which Drew credits
to that coastal wind that thickens the skins of the grapes,
and to the extra sunlight the vines are exposed to above
the fog line.
What fruit Drew doesn't source from the ridge comes
almost entirely from the Deep End. He pours his 2018 FogEater, the name taken from the Boontling term for a coastal
dweller on the fringe. He's blended it solely from Deep End
fruit since his first bottling in 2009, until this latest release,
2018, which includes 17 percent from Ferrington Vineyard
in Boonville.
However that small bit of Boonville fruit changes the
wine or not, the Deep End signature comes through: It
begins with a high tone of translucent red fruit reminiscent of wild strawberry, or something more exotic, laced
with oyster mushroom savor. The fruit molds to deeper red
berry tones like fire-blown glass once it's cooled.
The Deep End may have the most cohesive identity in
Anderson Valley, or so this writer began to feel after three
days travelling through the region. Spend enough time
here, and you, too, may begin to feel the gravitational pull
toward the Deep End-the high western and eastern ridges
pulling everything inward toward the valley at Boonville
and gently sloping down to the lowest elevation at the Deep
End, where the fog likes to hover. Despite its reputation
as the margin, the Deep End may well be the Valley's true
centerpoint. n
WINE & SPIRITS

APRIL 2020

Wine & Spirits - April 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - April 2020