Ramble Buddha‘s Dharma Vineyard Valdiguié Rosé Mendocino 2020

In 1965, Billy Davies was just an enthusiastic young kid when his parents, Jack and Jamie, first drove him and his brother Johnny into the Napa Valley in an old pick-up truck. Jamie was pregnant with their soon-to-arrive younger brother Hugh, and the entire family was about to embark on a grand, albeit risky, adventure. As they pulled up a winding driveway at the base of Diamond Mountain, just south of Calistoga, there loomed above them a neglected Victorian mansion where the sole denizens were a few bats and a dusty grand piano. The Davies family had just purchased a winery.. but not just any winery. At the time, Billy could little comprehend the history of this great wine estate, Schramsberg Vineyards, founded by Jacob Schram in 1862. But his father Jack realized the cultural significance of the estate in Napa lore; in fact, it had been designated a California Historical Landmark in 1957. The steep hillside behind Billy’s new home was honeycombed with wine caves bored into the solid rock by Chinese laborers almost a hundred years earlier. Even the great 19th-century Scottish poet and travel writer Robert Louis Stevenson had visited, tasted, and declared Jacob Schram’s wine “bottled poetry”. In order to recapture this greatness, however, there was first a lot of work to be done.

Billy grew up and thrived along with the estate’s fortunes. Before long he was picking grapes
into wooden lug boxes, pruning vines pre-dawn, driving a tractor, and stacking Schramsberg’s legendary champagne bottles in the hand-dug caves. Over the ensuing decades, Billy and his family would honor not only the winery’s original namesake, but
rehabilitate Schramsberg’s vineyards, and its wines, to their former glory. The estate flourished and the wines won James Beard awards and were served at the White House. Growing up with this ethos of honoring history and stewardship, it is no wonder that, when Billy decided to inaugurate his own wine label, Ramble Wines, he looked to old vines and heritage vineyards.

Ramble Wines takes its inspiration from the freewheeling fun of the Napa Valley era of Billy’s
boyhood- the 1960s and 1970s. He is revisiting once lost, and now re-found, grapes like Chenin Blanc, Carignan, Napa Gamay, and Charbono. By working with the organically farmed, old vines of the North Coast, Billy is looking to the past while making fresh wines for a new generation to discover. On the Ramble Valdiguié Rosé label is an old photo of young Billy and his brother in the back of an old pick-up truck. Along with a wooden lug box, they are depicted right back where their unpredictable adventure first began.

The grapes for the 2020 Ramble Valdiguié Rosé are sourced from the Buddha's Dharma
Vineyard near Ukiah in Mendocino County. This certified organic, dry-farmed patch of vines was originally planted in 1944 and takes its name from the nearby City of Ten Thousand Buddhas temple. The fruit, 75% Validguié and 25% Barbera, was gently picked, pressed, and fermented with native yeast. It is a crisp, refreshing, dry wine, gushing with bright acidity and juicy red fruit characteristics reminiscent of strawberry-rhubarb pie and candied cherry. It is the perfect wine for sitting on a tailgate and catching up with friends or dreaming up your next big adventure.