The word is derived from “Terminus” the Roman God of borders and boundaries. The source of the grapes for TERMINIM is the Alder Springs Vineyard in Northern Mendocino County – that’s as far as we will go… Terminim.
CALLING ASPEN
I called my friend Jack Edwards last June while he was at the Aspen Food & Wine Festival to see how he was doing. He casually mentioned that he was with François Villard of the Rhône Valley in France and oh, by the way, François was thinking about doing another California wine project. I suggested that François come to California, so we could talk about it.
We met in August 2017 and immediately drove up to Mendocino to see Stu Bewley at Alder Springs Vineyard. After our crew walked the vineyard together we agreed to start very small with three grape varieties. Marsanne, Roussanne, Syrah – to see how the techniques that François uses in the Rhône might work here. Over the next few days together François and I worked on a partnership plan as well as the details on how we wanted to make the wines.
This is a collaboration between François Villard and myself (Donald Patz) – it’s not my vision alone but a dialogue between the Rhône Valley and the Napa Valley where we were making the wine. We worked closely with Stu Bewley to get the grapes at a ripeness level where we felt they best expressed the vineyard character. The Marsanne was from “Spirit Rock” the Roussanne was from “Clay Field” and the Syrah was from “Cahto Ridge” and “Spirit Rock” blocks.
François and I had worked out the methods we wanted to employ in making the wines previously but he was in the loop daily with updates on progress and chemistry as we worked on the wines. We had an ongoing email and text conversation through the whole harvest and fermentation process.