2009 Zinfandel Estate Alexander Valley

Fritz Stuhlmuller oversees his family property, which encompasses 150 acres just outside of Healdsburg. While the estate has been known as a top source of grapes for many years (many of California's best wineries buy fruit from these vineyards), Stuhlmuller admitted that the family's own wines "weren't where I wanted them." He told me that convincing his father that restricting crop levels was the first step toward that goal, "and he was pretty freaked out" by the idea of dropping fruit on the ground. "Look at all that money just laying there, going rotten" was his father's response to stepping out into the world of low yields. With his winemaker, Leo Hansen, Stuhlmuller has made serious strides toward his goal of taking full advantage of this site, which includes river bench and hillsides, all of it cool and most prone to fog, with a range of soil types.