For the third year in a row, the lot of wine selected for Navarro's Old Vine Cuvée was produced from grapes grown at Berry Vineyards, located southeast of Ukiah. We've purchased Berry's Zinfandel since 2004 and we're always pleased with the consistent quality of fruit grown on these 70-year-old vines. Ed Berry always delivers his Zinfandel grapes over a couple of days and we've noticed that the fruit from the first day's picking is frequently our best lot of Zinfandel. At first we thought that the faster the Berry Zin ripened, the better the fruit, but then we realized it was something else. Ed Berry, like most farmers, has to be super-organized to get all the work done on time—nature doesn't wait for dawdlers. Ed is definitely organized and we realized in a recent conversation that he has a specific order in how he harvests from the different blocks. Ed likes getting the hard work out of the way, so he always harvests the fruit from vines on the steepest slope first! No wonder we like the first day's picking so much; these hillside vines are planted on thinner soil with a limited capacity to retain water. As a result, the vines bear a lighter crop and have to send their roots deep to survive; the sense of place is revealed front and center.

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