Balinard Vineyards

After many years of wine making we dreamed of becoming "winegrowers" where we could exercise full control from vine to bottle.  We acquired an old abandoned apple orchard located on the top of a beautiful south sloping hillside property near the quaint West Sonoma country hamlets of Graton and Occidental that lies within the boundaries of the Russian River and Green Valley AVAs.  The organic Balinard Vineyards was planted to Pinot Noir in the spring of 2007 and is the first step in realizing this dream.  The vineyard was designed and planted to our rigorous quality requirements.  Our hard work was aided by some of the best vineyard practitioners in the business to arrive at optimal clones, root stocks, row orientation, trellising, irrigation and soils that would best express this unique site.  We call it our "organic spice box Pinot vineyard" due to the three very cool Pinot clones planted on the property and 100% organic methods deployed in the vineyard. We didn’t follow the herd on this one and took some risks that we know will pay off.   Each Pinot Noir variation planted here provide great qualities on their own but when combined will create a magic wine.