We were now ready to taste some Zinfandels from the Bedrock Vineyard itself. The side-by-side tasting including the 2023 Bedrock Wine Co. Bedrock Zinfandel and the 2021 Once & Future Wine Company Bedrock Zinfandel.
Once & Future Wine was started by Joel Peterson in 2014. Of course, as the Godfather of Zinfandel, he’d been making wine for about 50 years before that, first with Joseph Swan Winery and then founding Ravenswood in 1976. More news on Ravenswood in a bit, but Joel said (from the Once & Future website): “Once and Future Wine Company is a return to the original vision I had for Ravenswood so many years ago. A project that specializes in wines from special vineyards made with a sensitivity to place and in a style that I personally love and believe in. Wines that force me to dust off the old redwood vats and get out a new punch down tool (my original is in the Smithsonian), wines that dye my hands that harvest shade of black/purple and sometimes force me to take an additional Advil some mornings. In short-wines of sweat, exertion, and love.”
Under the Once & Future label, Joel is indeed making wine from some special vineyards, including Dickerson, Green & Red, Old Hill Ranch, Teldeschi, Belloni and of course Bedrock, among others. Mostly Zinfandel, he is also making Mataro, Petite Sirah, Merlot and a red blend from the Bedrock Vineyard named Frances Cuvée Proprietary Red Blend in honor of Joel’s mother.
This provided us a great opportunity to taste wines made by father and son from the same vineyard. Both wines had very long finishes. The Bedrock had cherry and raspberry notes and a hint of baking spice on the tongue. The Once & Future version showed raspberry and blackberry and well-rounded balanced tannins.
To complete our tasting, Joel shared something really special, not that all the preceding wines weren’t!
Joel had brought a bottle of 1993 Ravenswood Belloni Zinfandel. Anyone who thinks Zinfandel can’t age hasn’t tried the right ones!
This gave us all the opportunity to hear Joel’s story about how he got involved with this vineyard in the Russian River Valley back in the Ravenswood days. The vineyard was planted in the early 1900s near Santa Rosa. Upon the death of the original owner, it was divided into three parcels, one of which was acquired by Ricardo Belloni in 1971. One day, Joel was driving by, scouting vineyards for Ravenswood, when he saw Ricardo in the vineyard pruning the vines. Joel walked over and started pruning with him. Eventually, the two men came to an agreement to sell Belloni grapes to Ravenswood, helped no doubt by Joel unwittingly offering a price far higher than what Ricardo was currently getting.
Our version of this story doesn’t do it justice. Joel really needs to get his memoirs published so everyone can enjoy his stories some of us already have.
The wine was a blend of the various parcels from the original Belloni vineyard. It showed boysenberry and blueberry perfume on the bouquet and taste buds. The elegant long finish and mouthfeel added to our appreciation of how well this wine had aged.
This also gave us the opportunity to talk about what has been pretty big news in the wine world – Ravenswood is back! Joel Peterson started Ravenswood in 1979 with business partner W. Reed Foster. It took a little while, but by 1992 Joel was devoting himself full time to the winery, to much critical acclaim and wine-drinking consumer popularity, forever cementing the Ravenswood name as one of the three Rs of Zinfandel (along with Rosenblum and Ridge; more about them in a future article). There’s a lot more to this story (we really need that memoir, Joel!) but eventually Ravenswood was sold to Constellation and later to Gallo. By then, Joel was busy making his Once & Future wines, getting back to his original mission. Somehow, during the transition from Constellation to Gallo, production of the famed Ravenswood wines stopped. Recently, Gallo has announced that the Ravenswood brand has been restarted, the first wines coming from Dry Creek Valley as well as single-vineyard offerings from the Monte Rosso, Teldeschi and MacMurray vineyards. Michael Eddy-Cory is head winemaker and Joel is on board as “spirit guide”. This should be very interesting.
We really want to thank everybody involved in our visit to the Bedrock Vineyard and sharing these wines from historic vineyards, as well as to commend them for everything they do to keep these vineyards alive. They all made it truly memorable. We also want to mention that the future of winemaking looks to be in very good hands – the children of Morgan and Kayte Peterson and Cody and Emily Rasmussen are already following in their parents’ footsteps!
One last thing – if you ever get a chance to hear Joel Peterson’s stories – do it!
More information about the Historic Vineyard Society and the wineries in this article can be found at their websites:
Home – Historic Vineyard Society
Michael and Karen Perlis have been pursuing their passion for wine for more than 30 years. They have had the good fortune of having numerous mentors to show them the way and after a couple of decades of learning about wine, attending events, visiting wineries and vineyards, and tasting as much wine as they possibly could, they had the amazing luck to meet Eve Bushman. Michael and Karen do their best to bring as much information as possible about wine to Eve’s Wine 101 faithful readers.
