Navarro's first Gewürztraminer, planted in 1975, was a clonal selection from Alsace grafted on to a vigorous rootstock developed specifically for California vineyards called AXR1. Per recommendation, we planted with a vine density of 727 vines per acre. It took us a decade to figure out that we needed to prune our vines to curved arc-canes, the same as in Alsace, as cordon pruning, common in California, resulted in excessive vigor and too little crop. By the time we thought we had mastered growing Gewürz, AXR1 began to fail, due literally to a lousy root louse, so our next big project was to research alternative rootstocks. Over the next decade we increased vine density as the newer rootstocks turned out to be less vigorous; Navarro's latest plantings feature 1,816 vines per acre, close to the density of vines in Ribeauvillé. Decades of education have gone into this bargain-priced Gewürztraminer, packed with a bit of sugar, lots of spice and everything nice.