Ravenswood Vineyard Designate Wines

Even to his close acquaintances, Otto Teller was larger than life—an irascible and exasperating figure who was generous to a fault, prodigious in his creative energy and unswerving in his devotion to the quality of life. "Mose," as Otto was known to his friends, was an environmentalist and organic farmer decades before those pursuits were considered politically correct—which was fi tting, since he made a kind of career out of being impolitic. Independently and unapologetically wealthy, he was a self-proclaimed "country slicker" who wore ascots to dinner and made weekly drives in his Jaguar from Sonoma to San Francisco for "luncheon." He also donated money to the homeless, founded the Sonoma Land Trust and established a 1,300-acre wildlife refuge in western Montana. That says nothing of Otto's personal benevolence, which was frequently accompanied by verbal barbs about the recipient's imperfections. In short, Teller was a confounding and commanding character in the grand old style of eccentric American outdoorsmen whose like has now largely passed from the earth. Otto's pride and joy was Oak Hill Farm in Sonoma Valley, where he raised fl owers, produce and decorative shrubs. In 1981 he expanded his domain to include Old Hill Ranch, an abandoned vineyard across Highway 12, where century-old Zinfandel vines were covered by blackberries and poison oak and discarded bathroom fi xtures. Consultants advised Otto to fumigate the property with methyl bromide and replant the vineyard, but instead he cleared the brush with a dragline, left a natural cover of grass and stimulated vine growth with foliar kelp, relying on ladybugs and praying mantises to control pests. Far ahead of his time, Teller rejected the use of chemical herbicides and fertilizers; since quality was his top priority, he saw no need to "improve" a vineyard that produced a ton of unsullied and unbelievably intense fruit per acre.

"Mose was a very unconventional man," Otto's widow Anne would later say. "He couldn't stand excesses or decorations or the distractions of modern life. He knew what was good, elegant and classic and he eschewed anything that didn't meet his standards. He wouldn't tolerate mediocrity, and he didn't waste his own time. He worked out a special recipe for life and he stuck to it." When Teller died in 1998 at the age of 90, his wizened grapevines were already older than he was. As they live on, so does Otto's legacy. An acknowledged benchmark in California wine, Ravenswood Old Hill Zinfandel is nothing less than an ongoing incarnation of Otto: big, rich, deep, generous, complex, uncompromising, apparently immortal and inarguably inimitable.

FLAVOR PROFILE:				Blackberry, black pepper, vanilla, coffee, smoky, and mint flavors


Location				Sonoma Valley

Acreage				About 14 acres

Year planted				Around 1880, oldest vineyard in Ravenswood portfolio

Soil type				Clay loam

Climate				"Banana Belt of Sonoma Valley"

Elevation				Sea level

Exposure				Slightly eastern

Spacing				6'X10'

Yield				Less than 1.5 tons per acre

Varietals				Old mixed vineyard, has Zinfandel, Mataro, Carignane, Grenache, Alicante Bouschet, Petite Sirah and various others

Rootstock				Mixed/St. George