Turley Zinfandel Hayne Vineyard: 1993 – 2015
BY STEPHEN TANZER |
Three years ago I had the good fortune to taste a complete set of Turley Wine Cellars’ Hayne Vineyard Petite Syrah, made from vines planted in 1953. This past March I followed up with a comprehensive look at Turley’s first—and arguably greatest—Zinfandel bottling, also from Hayne Vineyard, in this case from vines planted in 1903! (The vineyard actually dates back to the 1870s but had been wiped out by phylloxera.) Both the Hayne Zinfandel and Hayne Petite Syrah were first made in vintage 1993 and both have shown remarkable quality, consistency and longevity over the years, with the Zin delivering more complexity early on. I’ve long considered this wine to be one of the handful of elite California Zinfandels, and my tasting in March certainly bolstered this belief.
I had hoped to find vintages dating back to the 1990s that were still alive, but I was still pleasantly surprised by the results of the tasting. With the exception of the 1995, which was quite high-toned and over the hill (or at least the bottle I tried was), even the earliest vintages were still in good shape. There wasn’t a single post-2000 vintage that didn’t have at least another decade of graceful development ahead of it—and more like 15+ years for vintages from 2005 on.
As I noted in my article on the Hayne Petite Syrah three years ago, Larry Turley’s sister Helen (co-owner and winemaker of Marcassin) made the first three vintages here. Ehren Jordan, who had previously worked in the Rhône Valley, assumed responsibility for winemaking in 1996 before moving on to focus on his Failla and Day labels. Tegan Passalacqua began as an assistant to Jordan in 2003 and took over as full-time winemaker and viticulturalist in 2009 and 2010.
Hayne Vineyard as seen in the Vinous Map: The Vineyards of St. Helena & Conn Valley, by Antonio Galloni and Alessandro Masnaghetti
The Hayne Zinfandel is Actually a Field Blend
Like the Petit Syrah, the Hayne Zinfandel is planted on head-trained, dry-farmed vines with a spacing of ten by eight feet on gravelly loam soil in a vineyard off Sulphur Springs Avenue on the west side of St. Helena, just south of the center of town. The vineyard is located within what winemaker Passalacqua describes as “the real grand cru area” of Napa Valley, which he said extends from Spottswoode (about a mile north of Hayne Vineyard) to Napanook in Yountville, a strip of land that has produced outstanding wines for at least 120 years.
Just over one-third of the Hayne Zinfandel vines were replanted in 1997, but thus far this fruit has been used as a core component of the winery’s Zinfandel Juveniles bottling. The Hayne Zinfandel vineyard could actually be described more accurately as a field blend, like most sites planted around or before the turn of the century, as it features 8% to 10% Trousseau, at least 5% Petit Sirah, and 1% Carignan, with all of the varieties picked together and co-fermented.
Three years ago I had the good fortune to taste a complete set of Turley Wine Cellars’ Hayne Vineyard Petite Syrah, made from vines planted in 1953. This past March I followed up with a comprehensive look at Turley’s first—and arguably greatest—Zinfandel bottling, also from Hayne Vineyard, in this case from vines planted in 1903!
