A Canifornian red blend from a passion project. Sandlands is a personal project headed by Tegan Passalacqua, the longtime head winemaker of Turley Wine Cellars. The focus of the project is to showcase the older varieties that used to dominate Californian viticulture before the the arrival of the Bordelais and Burgundian grapes. These wines are made with head trained, dry farmed and ungrafted vines, as was the norm over a century ago. This is where the "sand" in Sandlands comes in as the infamous grape pest phylloxera cannot tolerate sandy soils, so most of these vineyards are in soils of decomposed granite (i.e. sand).
This wine is a 3 way blend of the fruits of 3 different old vineyards. It is 1/3rd Cinsault from Bechtold Vineyard (Planted in 1886), 1/3rd Carignane from Spenker Ranch (Planted in 1900), and 1/3rd Zinfandel from Kirschenmann Vineyard (Planted in 1915). The Bechtold vineyard in particular is legendary as the site of the oldest Cinsault vines still alive!
