Ravenswood Vineyard Designate Wines

Just before a football game at Shawnee High School, Bill Dickerson searched out his teammate Gordon Cooper in the locker room. "Hey Gordo," Bill said. "Do you mind if I borrow your car? I left my thigh pads at home."

"No problem," Cooper said, reaching into his locker and handing Dickerson the keys.

Bill went outside, started the engine, and pulled out of the parking lot. When he came to the stop sign at the school entrance, the brake pedal went straight to the floor and the car careened out into Friday cross traffic, other vehicles swerving around him and blasting their horns.

"Why didn't you tell me it had no brakes?"

Dickerson growled as he and Cooper ran onto the playing field. Bill had gone all the way home and back using only the emergency brake.

"Oh, sorry," Cooper grinned. "That's how I drive it." This may or not have had anything to do with the fact that Bill was later accepted to Annapolis while Gordo wasn't. But Dickerson secretly admired his friend's daredevil nature, so he wasn't especially surprised when Cooper was chosen as one of the first Apollo astronauts.

By that time, Dickerson was a Marin County psychiatrist and a serious wine buff. When he was launching his practice and Cooper was orbiting Earth, you could count good Napa Valley wineries on one hand. One of them, Dickerson noticed, had a particularly talented young assistant, so Bill bankrolled him to start his own operation. Joe Heitz proceeded to help revolutionize California wine, largely on the strength of a eucalyptus-tinged Cabernet Sauvignon grown in Martha's Vineyard (named for its owner's wife) on the west side of Napa Valley.

Inspired by that example, Bill bought another eucalyptus-lined vineyard close by. The old, dry-farmed, head-pruned vines were Zinfandel, not Cabernet, but that fit right into the plans of another promising young vintner of Dickerson's acquaintance. The wine that Joel Peterson produced from Bill's grapes was immediately recognized as extraordinary: bright, elegant, sumptuous and aromatic, redolent of raspberry, cedar, mint and (yes) eucalyptus.

The Wine Advocate's Robert M. Parker, Jr. would go on to call Ravenswood Dickerson "the Heitz Martha's Vineyard of Zinfandels." Bill, however, can't help but think of it as the Gordon Cooper of wines.

FLAVOR PROFILE:				Red raspberries, strawberry jam, cedar, eucalyptus, and allspice


Location				Napa Valley

Acreage				About 10 Acres

Year planted				4 acres planted 1930, 3 acres planted 1979, 3 acres planted 1985

Soil type				Bale clay loam

Climate				Warm St. Helena climate

Elevation				Sea level

Exposure				Flat

Spacing				8'X8'

Yield				About 2.5 tons per acre

Varietals				Pretty pure stand of Zinfandel

Rootstock				St. George