Old Hill Ranch Vineyard Map Details 150 year history

by Andrew Barrow, Posted Apr 6th 2006 @ 5:21PM

With the aim of documenting each and every vine in the blend and showing the location in the vineyard the Old Hill Ranch has created a wonderful map. Their blend is made up of over 26 differnet grape varieties with each detailed on the map.

The map was made to assist people in understanding the uniqueness and complexity of the vineyard, document the vineyard’s makeup for historical purposes, lead to a better understanding of what the founders of the vineyard were thinking and create a knowledge foundation for better farming of the vineyard. It forms a unique document for understanding this Sonoma vineyard.

Old Hill Ranch was founded by William McPherson Hill in 1852. It was the first vineyard in Sonoma to be planted with non-mission varieties and it was recognized in the 1860s as a source of some of California’s finest wines. More recently wine historian Charles Sullivan called Old Hill the source of “California’s first really famous Zinfandel.” While Old Hill Ranch has always been recognized as a Zinfandel “field blend” containing a number of different varieties, the true extent of the field blend was only uncovered when the survey of the vines for the map was completed.

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Filed Under: Drink Recipes
Tags: grape map, grape varieties, GrapeMap, GrapeVarieties, old hill ranch vineyard, OldHillRanchVineyard, sonoma map, sonoma wine, SonomaMap, SonomaWine, vineyard map, VineyardMap, west coast, wine, zinfandel