Fly by Night ZINFANDEL

Oakville in Napa Valley is well known for it's spectacular Cabernet Sauvignons and many of the icons of the Valley come from vineyards in the appellation. Zinfandel is virtually unknown there with only about a dozen or so acres in production. From the 1999 through the 2004 vintage Fly by Night Zinfandel came from a nine acre block from the 54 acre Pelissa Vineyard, an organically farmed vineyard in Oakville. The vineyard is located just south of Oakville Crossroad and just east of Highway 29, right across the road from Opus One. Grapes have been grown on this land for over a century with a number of owners over the years. In 1990 the Pelissa family acquired this vineyard from BV when it was known as the BV number 9 vineyard. The vineyard was replanted in the 1990s with new phylloxera resistant St. George rootstock. In 1995 a block of Zinfandel was created using cuttings from some of the old Zinfandel vines that were kept in the vineyard. These old vines were probably planted in the early 1950s and have been identified as the White Barn Ranch clone. The first crop from this vineyard in 1999 produced our critically acclaimed Robert Parker 90 points Premier Vintage Fly by Night  Zinfandel. Zinfandel was definitely back on map in Oakville! Production quantities have varied over the years from our initial 500 cases of 1999 to a high of 1800 cases of 2002.

Our 2005 vintage marks our first harvest from the new H&H vineyard which is located several hundred yards from the original Pelissa vineyard.   It is located on the northeast corner of Yount Mill Road and Highway 29 in Oakville.  It is also farmed by the Pelissa family.  It was completely replanted in 2001 with identical rootstock (St.George) and zinfandel clone (White Barn Ranch).  

Our 2006 vintage is extremely small. Only 986 cases were produced, all in cork finish. With such a small production it did not make sense to bottle in both screw cap and cork finish bottles. Sorry about that screw cap fans!  We're planning on bottling all of the 2007 Zinfandel in screw cap now that we have found a suitable bottle.

The Pelissa and H&H zinfandel vineyards are California (CCOF) certified organically farmed, a very difficult and demanding certification to achieve and maintain. Our 2004 Fly by Night Zinfandel is our first wine to be labeled organic. For the 2007 Fall release we are nearing our goal of having all of our current production designated as "organic."

Our Zinfandel is an elegant, well balanced wine. Robert Parker wrote that our 1999 Fly by Night Zinfandel was "made in the style of a classified growth Bordeaux." Decanter magazine rated our 2001 Fly by Night Zinfandel as one of the ten best at the 2004 ZAP tasting in San Francisco. 

The little airplane on the bottle is a Beechcraft Staggerwing, the first and in our opinion, the most beautiful airplane ever produced by Beech. The airplane symbolizes a style and elegance that we have tried to capture with our Fly by Night Zinfandel. In the early 90s John and Tracy used to fly off for weekend getaways in their single engine Mooney airplane. That was, of course, before kids!

We currently ship to these states, preferable to a business address: AK, CA, CO, DC (District Of Columbia), FL, IA, IL, MN, NV, NH, NM, NC, TX, VA, and WA.