Slaughterhouse Cellars

Slaughterhouse Cellars
8461 St. Helena Highway
Rutherford, California
USA 94558
Phone: (707) 967-0853
http://www.slaughterhousecellars.com

Contact: David Slaby
Email: [email protected]

We purchased this property in 1997. The prior owners were in bankruptcy and there was much to do to restore the main house, yard, gardens and most importantly the vineyard to a respectable condition. The vineyard had been planted years earlier on AXR-1 rootstock, promised by UC Davis to all in the business to be phyloxora resistant. As we all found out, it was not. However, the small amount of crop we were able to pick from the dying vines was enough for our purposes and our first two home wine vintages -- 1997 and 1998.

We struggled mightily to find someone to “rip” our vineyard and get it replanted. There was little interest in dealing with 1.37 acre vineyard. Tuck Beckstoffer came to our rescue and, in May, 1999, we replanted using 039-16 rootstock, with second year green growing 337 Bordeaux clone on the South and Davis 6 clone on the North. We believe this marriage of the best French cabernet clone and the magical Davis 6 would give us a robust, complex combination of cabernet characteristics and flavor profiles. We also planted 158 Cabernet Franc vines to be used for blending, if we believe that is desirable in any given year.

In order, to provide Jason with the highest quality grapes to mold into a great wine, we work with Josh Clark of Clark Vineyard Management. (Josh’s family makes the highly acclaimed Clark–Claudon wines. Josh and his skillful crew take care of those vineyard necessities like sulfuring, and the commercial harvest which we cannot. Otherwise, we oversee and personally undertake the day to day requirements such as shoot thinning, suckering, canopy management and crop thinning. These activities are untaken to reduce the yield and greatly increase the intensity of flavor and quality of the grapes to be harvested. We keep the yield to less than 4 tons per acre, much less than the vineyard would produce if left to its own natural yield.

Winemaker: Jason Fisher

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