NEWS
Enter Brent Young, who joined Jordan as a harvest intern in 2005—the year John Jordan took the reins and began to revitalize the business literally from the ground up. Armed with a viticulture degree and a drive to always improve, Young soon moved into a full-time role as viticulturist at Jordan and began to tackle a complex problem below the surface of the estate vineyards: these young grapevines were already dropping in performance after just 5-10 years of life.
John Jordan agreed to do whatever it took to find the cause and revive the plants. Soil-mapping and GPS (Global Positioning System) technology, tools that didn’t exist when Jordan planted its valley or hillside vineyards, were utilized to better understand the soil chemistry and water- holding capacity. An exhaustive, three-year study revealed a patchwork of different soils across the estate, though each vineyard block had been farmed uniformly. Many vineyard blocks were also planted on a hard clay soil called serpentine, which can make it challenging for grapevines to spread their deep roots.
“The importance of soil, soil and soil was drummed into me by my mentor, Andre Tchelistcheff,” Davis says.
Young began to implement new farming strategies across the estate, tailored to each soil type, from irrigation and leafing changes to grafting underperforming cabernet vines to other blending varietals, such as malbec and petit verdot. In the meantime, John Jordan green-lighted Davis’s desire to increase the amount of grapes purchased from nearby, top- notch growers, to improve wine quality and consistency. “The importance of soil, soil and soil was drummed into me by my mentor, Andre Tchelistcheff,” Davis says. “Without great soil, we can’t produce great wines. The soils at the Jordan Estate are high in magnesium and low in drainability, and we’ve experienced reduced vine growth and crop development as a result.”
In 2012, the team collectively decided to sell Jordan’s original valley floor vineyard to focus totally on working with grower vineyards and on farming the hillside grapevines at Jordan Estate.
“The goal is to make every vintage better than the last,” Jordan says. “We had to say goodbye to a vineyard that could no longer supply us with the quality of grapes we demand.”
Under Young’s direction, Jordan Estate petit verdot grapevines were healthier and more balanced in flavor than ever before. Experiments in certain cabernet blocks were yielding positive results.
18
As Jordan Estate vineyards approached their twentieth birthday, during the cool-climate years of 2010 and 2011, they began to struggle to ripen their grapes. Some leaves began to turn red, and it seemed as if another virus was attacking the plants as they approached the 20-year mark. Vineyards across Sonoma and Napa counties were facing the same sickness, first spotted in Napa Valley in 2008.
The disease became known as Red Blotch, but the cause was not diagnosed until 2016. Like the phylloxera bug that devastated Jordan’s original valley floor vineyard in 1996, the alfalfa treehopper had attacked the Jordan Estate hillsides, spreading a virus that turned the leaves red each fall. The treatment? Replant every grapevine.
Successful agriculture is a balance of ecology—a marriage between plants, insects, soils and weather. With Jordan grapevines, it seems that the marriage can only last 20 years before it’s time for a fresh start. Young is determined to break the cycle this time. In 2016, a massive seven-year plan to replant Jordan Estate’s 118 acres of grapevines began.
Young’s mission is to return cabernet sauvignon grapes grown on the Jordan property to the final blend,
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