Alta Sueños

45 years ago, Carlo and Jane Besio planted the acre around their Portola Valley home to Sangiovese, Dolcetto, Refosco, and a bit of Pinot Noir and Syrah.

Inspired by his own travels and the stories of parents who immigrated from Italy before he was born, Carlo practiced his ancestral home winemaking tradition for much of his life. His head-trained vines were tended by hand (and by family) from 1980 until his passing in 2016.

Portola Valley is located on the eastern slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains, about 500 feet above San Francisco Bay. The vineyard sits on an alluvial fan of pleistocene gravel and clay which lies above the greenstone bedrock of the Franciscan Complex. Just ten miles from the ocean and only eight from Ridge’s legendary Monte Bello, the site sees NorCal's cool, coastal climate—although like most of the AVA’s eastern-facing slope it tends to remain a bit warmer overnight; ideal conditions for thick-skinned Italian varietals to reach phenolic ripeness without giving freshness and acidity away. 

Today, Besio Vineyard is dry-farmed to organic standards by the team at Costal Range Vineyards. Jane Besio, now in her 80s, still lives on the property. I consider it an honor to make the wine that’s been a staple of her table for decades, and I couldn't be more excited to share an expression of this special place with you.  

AVA: Santa Cruz Mountains
Site: Besio Vineyard
Soils: Pleistocene gravel, sand, silt & clay
Planted: 1980-81
Varietals: Dolcetto, Sangiovese, Refosco, Syrah, Pinot Noir

When you're standing in a one-acre vineyard with five distinct varietals in your bin, the call to keep things simple in the cellar becomes an easy one. 

Brix at Harvest: 21°
pH: 3.40
TA: 5.7 g/L
ABV: 11.6%
Production: 550L

Fruit was hand-harvested at dawn on October 12 and immediately transported to the winery. 100% of the clusters were destemmed with the equipment set to maximize berries left intact. No effort to sort the lot by varietal was made: all fruit was processed to a single open-top fermenter and cold-soaked overnight, then foot-treaded the following morning. For the next several days the vessel was moved outdoors periodically and left in direct sunlight on a concrete crush pad to warm the must and promote native yeast fermentation. By day three, a pronounced cap had formed and the tank was moved permanently to a cool spot in the winery and given gentle punchdowns as necessary until primary fermentation completed on October 24.

After an additional 36 hours of extended maceration, free run was racked away and the remaining must was bladder-pressed to 1.1 bar. All the resulting wine was combined to a single tank, blanketed with CO2, and left to settle in the cellar until November 3, when it was gravity-racked to two barrels of neutral French oak and an additional stainless steel keg. Malolactic fermentation occurred naturally and completed by mid-February. The wine was bottled without fining or filtration after 11 months élevage on September 9, 2024.

A word on sulfites & intervention: This wine is the product of native yeast fermentation and other spontaneous natural processes. Necessarily, these activities were directed in the winery by temperature, atmosphere, time, extraction and minimum-effective additions which have resulted in 0.0114 grams of unbound SO2 per liter of finished wine.