Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/759645
{ SOMMjournal.com } 89 (i.e., black peppery spice)—along with the chiseled, acid-driven island typicity—to be found anywhere . . . at least in comparison to any other contemporary rendition of this classic California varietal. When tasting the current vintage of the Santa Catalina Island–grown Zinfandel—a 2013 combining cracked pepper and rapier acidity with silken rose petal delicacy—with Rusack winemaker Steven Gerbac this past August, Gerbac mused: "How much of the peppery character is due to the terroir or to the clonal material, I am not sure, especially since we planted the exact same material on our Ballard Canyon estate, where we're not getting quite as much peppercorn spiciness." The story behind Rusack's Zinfandel clone is where our plot thickens: In 2005 Geoff Rusack was told, through associates in The Nature Conservancy—which now owns over three-quarters of both Santa Catalina Island and the nearby Santa Cruz Island—that a single stray grape vine had been discovered on Santa Cruz Island, hidden on a hill among a dense thicket of lemonade berry shrubs, willows and toyon trees. The beckoning nature of this finding was that this island, the largest of California's Channel Islands (96.53 square miles), was once owned entirely by an Italian-Swiss entrepreneur named Justinian Caire, who established the long forgotten Santa Cruz Island Wine Company in the early 1880s. According to official documents, at one point in the early 1900s the Caire family was cultivating more than 150 acres of grapes on Santa Cruz Island for table wine produc - tion, primarily Zinfandel (original source unknown), but also some Grenache, a black-skinned grape identified as "Burgundy," Mataro, Trousseau, Burger, Grey Riesling, Muscat of Alexandria and smaller amounts of others. A large, gravity-flow winery was built from bricks forged on the island; the wines primarily shipped off in barrels to merchants on the mainland for blending or bottling. Prohibition, however, permanently crippled the operation. In 1939, remaining barrels of unsold wine were poured down a drain by the property's new owner (Edwin Stanton) and all the vines ripped out from the hillsides, which were rededicated to cattle and sheep ranching. The question in 2005, when Rusack climbed into that thicket on Santa Cruz Island in search of the hidden vine, was: Which variety had survived? Leafed cut - tings were clipped and sent to U.C. Davis, where DNA identification came back as Zinfandel. In tribute to the vine's historic lineage, in 2007 Rusack planted an acre of the newly discovered material on Santa Catalina Island on a rootstock selection (to counter salt and boron content in the soil), and in 2010, 3.5 acres of the same Zinfandel clone was planted on its own rootstock in the warmer-climate (Region III) gravelly loam hillside site of Rusack's Ballard Canyon estate. The day before visiting Santa Cruz Island with Gerbac in November to look at this single runaway vine—still thriving under lemonade berry brush—we sat down to a vertical tasting at Rusack Vineyards: a com - parison of all six of Rusack's vintages of Santa Catalina Island Zinfandel (2009–2014) with three vintages of their Ballard Canyon Estate Zinfandel (2012–2014). The differences were primarily the Santa Catalina Island wines' lean, grippy, acid-driven structure, contrasting with the fuller-bodied, rounder, plumper, ripe cranberry/pomegranate/ cola fruit qualities of the Ballard Canyon Zinfandels. The commonality, contrary to the skepticism expressed by Gerbac three months before, definitely seemed to be the pronounced cracked peppercorn spici - ness—particularly strong in the soon-to-be- released 2014s from both Santa Catalina Island and Ballard Canyon. Considering the contrasting terroirs, the spiced character of this unique Zinfandel clone is making its mark—both as an origi - nal project and one of history in the remak- ing, an exciting contribution to American wine mythology. Winemaker Steven Gerbac takes field sample of Zinfandel. Santa Cruz Island's Chapel of the Holy Cross, today surrounded by only a few Zinfandel vines. (inset) The Chapel of the Holy Cross in the 1890s.