Our two vineyards at GlenLyon are located in Sonoma Valley's historic Valley of the Moon, a tad north of Glen Ellen just off Bennett Valley Road, on the same property where we have our home and our winery.

Squire and Suzy hand-planted their first vineyard to Cabernet Sauvignon in 1987 on a steep, west-facing hillside and it was the first quadrilateral-cordon, vertically-trellised vineyard in Sonoma Valley. Squire and Suzy made their first wines from these early harvests, but most of the Cabernet crop was sold to local wineries with names like Laurel Glen, Wellington and Ravenswood.

Ten years later in 1997, we planted our second, five-acre vineyard at GlenLyon in Syrah. This vineyard starts at the highest elevation on the property and runs the length of three football fields, south toward Sonoma Mountain. (For you clone/rootstock geeks, the vines are an Aussie K1 Clone on 110R rootstock, are cane pruned and vertically trellised.)

Early in Spring of 2002, we made the decision to graft the entire lower Cabernet vineyard over to Syrah. (Geeks: Rhone Clone #877 on the original 5-C rootstock) Award-winning Cabernet had been produced in the vineyard site, so we were often asked: "Why did you convert it to Syrah?" Good question ... And a couple of equally good answers:

The first reason is that both Squire and Suzy LOVE Syrah! We felt that the lower elevation of the original Cabernet vineyard would produce different Syrah qualities than the fruit produced in the established upper vineyard. Syrah in warmer locations (upper vineyard) tends to produce fruity, rich, red-raspberry flavors and the cooler location fruit (lower vineyard) would lend itself to blackberry flavors with a touch of pepper and a hint of the spice of bacon. So we now have the option to bottle each wine separately or create a blend using grapes from the two distinct vineyards.

The second reason was the timing of the harvest. Syrah historically is harvested earlier than Cabernet Sauvignon and because this vineyard is at the cooler, lower elevation on the Estate, we were often forced to harvest the Cabernet fruit in November. At that time of year, cold weather starts to set in and the rain made harvest-time a little scary.

(We did have the option of ripping out the old Cab vineyard and replacing the plants with Syrah vines, but we didn't have the heart to tear out 1,112 old friends. That's why we grafted. So now we have Syrah growing out of Cabernet Sauvignon growing out of 5C rootstock. Three different species of grapevines on one plant! Go figure.)

The vineyards are surrounded by electric fences and keep most of the aforementioned wild critters away from the grapes, but the real challenge each year are the barn swallows who love to feast on the ripening clusters and the wild turkeys who fly over the fences just before harvest to munch on our grapes. (Hunters with proper licenses please apply.)

There's a spot at the top of our upper Syrah vineyard that we call “The Overlook" where we've been blessed to have six weddings for friends. (Almost all six have been successful, so we’re way ahead of the national average....) Rings, vows of love, toasts, tears of happiness and more than a few glasses of wine have been exchanged on this site. Both Diarmid O'Duibthne and Dionysos smile and say that it's a blessed place.