Picking Syrah in the cool morning fog at Las Madres. John and Jean Painter tend this small vineyard in the Carneros AVA just north of San Pablo bay. We showed up early to catch sunrise in the vineyard on harvest day and found thick fog rolling across this beautiful vineyard. As John Painter explains in this video, Las Madres is planted to two different Syrah clones, which both lend their unique characteristics to wines from Las Madres.

Video Transcription

[Music Playing] Harvest 2007 CRUSHPAD San Francisco John: And the field looks beautiful, does not it? Yes, it was a good growing season early, there end in Peter that at the end what I like said two his spikes maybe and then-- Armando: At the whole season was really moderate, for the lack of rain that we have this season it was cool and the mind loved it. We were expecting the canopy to crash, to crash and it just did not although the crops were moderate. The minds a lot smarter than we are but they just bear the kind of this held up to get really well in the fruit just really it is physiologically ripe but in its firm, it is that real good too good pressure so it is a great growing season. My name is Armando Ceja and I helped John manage his vineyard on a day-to-day basis. John: Plus he manages hundreds of acres of grapes and has his own mind level to himself that is not like that smarter. John Painter owner with my wife of Las Madres seniors, the farm distended my acres of grapes. The Las Madres is in the Cenoma Carneros. It is sort within the South West Central portion of the Carnero’s which is good for us because we get a very large influence off of the base San Pablo and then also the Westerlies coming off across Honolulu from the ocean. Our first harvest is 2002 and six years into it I can say that we do have a beginning year which yields very little, 15-17 times. Next year which would be fourth leaf which gives you pretty much full production in that took us in the mid 30’s as I remember then we have had a very hot year in 2004 and that I think kept this down in the mid-30’s and then 2005 and 2006 were very slow languish years where everything was able to hang as long as you could imagine and made most guys who farm grapes crazy. [Foreign Language] In 1999 we planted the vineyard we planted pasture, the upper vineyard and hold as lower vineyard at the same time. Last year is call 174 in the entire French and tab clone of Cero and wholly is clone 300 also in entire branch clone both from the Rome both cleaned up product over here some years back and they are proving to be interesting clones for this area. You will find that after test a little bit more neutrality has more economics, more spice and good fruit and hold the lower vineyard is kind of a gashing way fruit forward Cero. The black surd almost identical that the 4550 miles per block. What you will see is that for the most part that vineyard is mostly one cluster per shoot however, we do have some strong vines were will allow to. The location is interesting because we do have the cool climate with the marine influence but we are also sort of a unprotected balls so we get the temperatures that were ripening the grapes but in the evenings and mornings we got flat cold and so what this does this allows the vines to recover. The soils are pretty common for the area, hair clay that been amended we did extensive testing before we planted the vineyard and we try to keep the soil healthy by cover cropping every year that is our fertilizer we do not fertilize with anything synthetic. The whole that makes a really good fruit forward blueberry as California Cero and when mix with the Aster which has more the elements of the their own, more minerality, more tannins right then you get a great blend. This is kind of going to be a good wine. Whenever the farmers, in a freak do not make superior wine we are out of business. We could never compete with Galo or Kenwood if we had too. So we have to come up for something that is very, very good.