The Bay Area in a Bottle

Great terroir comes in many forms. Truly unique sites make unique wines. ÆRENA Wines is always looking for something that is a little out of the ordinary, singular and special. We found it in the San Francisco Bay.

Some of the rarest grapevines in California can be found in the San Francisco Bay AVA - an area that encompasses a handful of Bay Area Counties and some very historic California wine growing country. At the heart of this uncommon appellation is Oakley, a changing city in Contra Costa County. It’s a suburban town nestled near where the San Francisco Bay meets the Sacramento River Delta. A combination of ancient vines and housing developments, this is a terroir in transition as cultures and generations shift. Nevertheless, vines persist with their OG stewards.

Oakley was originally settled by Spaniards, Portuguese and Italians who found the climate reminiscent of the Mediterranean and planted thousands of acres of vineyards. The land upon which ÆRENA’s Rose is sourced boasts vines both 30-years-young and 135-years-old. The del Barba family, keeper of these vines’ stories, is down to earth and humble. Tom del Barba is a fourth-generation farmer. His family, and many in the area, came from the walled city of Lucca, in Tuscany. These original Bay Area immigrants planted the varieties of their homeland and because of the terroir, the vines are incredibly old. The soils are the sandy banks of the Bay Delta and very little can live in it, including the phylloxera root louse. It makes organic farming really easy. As a result, you find these gnarly old head-pruned bestats, own-rooted, standing like sentinels in a field.

For years, these vineyards supplied the likes of Bonny Doon and Turley and more recently, Morgan Twain Peterson of Bedrock and others of California’s nouveau winemaking class. These vines are 135-year-old Mourvedre and Carignan, locally known as Mataro and “care-again” respectively. The vines are so old that in a good year, Tom gets one bunch per spur. In some years, a spur may not fruit at all. Such are the vagaries of old vine farming.

The del Barba vineyard allows ÆRENA winemaker Aaron Pott to “fulfill all of his Rhone and southern Italian fantasies at the same time.”

These 135-year-old vines make up the 2017 ÆRENA Rose. Yes, 135-year-old rose. There are very few roses from Napa available in the marketplace. As far as we know, ÆRENA is the only rose from the San Francisco Bay AVA.

A kiss of skin contact before the juice is pressed off the skins.
A little time sur lees for texture.
Racked to slumber for a few months before bottling.
ÆRENA’s Rose Is truly the Bay Area in a bottle.