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When we purchased the
parcel which is now Sonatera Vineyard in 1997, the
land had been unused for nearly twenty years. During
the previous forty years, it had been a small part
of a cattle ranch. While most of the land had been
cleared and grazed for decades, one corner of the
parcel was beautiful woodland sprinkled with oaks.
We resolved to keep that area in its natural state.
We began preparing the land for planting in late summer
1998. Our first task was removing the husks of an old
barn and out buildings and a hedgerow of dead and dying
pine trees. Siding from the barn when to an architectural
salvage firm, while the trunks of the trees were delivered
to a paper mill. The enormous stumps and rootballs
of the trees were fashioned into a wildlife habitat
wall bordering the undeveloped woodland. Innumerable
quail and a family of foxes now call it home.
Next we had to attend to the soil. Testing had shown
low pH and calcium levels, so we amended with natural
mined gypsum and oyster shell lime harvested from the
bottom of San Francisco Bay. After we spread 165 tons
of these materials over our 11 to-be-planted acres,
an enormous tractor with five-foot ripping tines crisscrossed
the property to integrate them into the soil.
Next we created a drainage system to capture rain runoff.
The drains all ran into a large settlement basin to
catch and contain the sediment in the runoff. The nearby
creek then gets only clear, fish-friendly water from
the vineyard.
To prevent erosion in this critical first season, we
seeded the vineyard with a mixture of native grasses
and wildflowers, covered all of the open ground with
rice straw, and installed siltation fencing along the
slopes. We then left the vineyard to safely ride out
the winter.
We resumed our work in the Spring of 1999. We began
by digging trenches, laying water pipe, and installing
a filtration and valve system to selective irrigate
separate areas of the vineyard. Next, we laid out
the planting rows and installed the individual vine
stakes and special trellis posts from Australia.
We strung the high-tensile steel fruiting and foliage
wires between the trellis posts, anchoring it at
the ends of each row to sturdy steel beams sunk
five feet into the soil. We also hung irrigation
tubing between the posts, and inserted drip emitters
at each vine site. Then we built an eight-foot tall
fence around the perimeter of the vineyard to keep
out hungry deer.
By midsummer 1999, all of the hardware and protection
was in place. With the fencing, perimeter road for
tractor turn-arounds, water filtration and valve
complex, equipment storage barn and harvest staging
area, our 11 acre vineyard site now enclosed 10
beautiful acres for actually growing grapes. Now
we finally could commence actually planting grapes.
The grafted vinestock — which we had ordered from
the grapevine nursery in the fall of 1997 — was
delivered to the vineyard. We dug a 12” hole by
each stake and post, carefully placed a grafted
vine in the hole, the filled in the hole. The irrigation
system was cycled to give the baby vines just the
right amount of water. And magically, they grew!
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