Kick Ranch Vineyard

Located in Sonoma County’s Rincon Valley, northeast of Santa Rosa, Kick Ranch is a sustainable, rolling hillside vineyard on the western side of the northern flank of Spring Mountain, which separates Sonoma and Napa Counties. The vineyard is sited on an alluvial bench having soil with an amazing mix of volcanic and other rock that contributes a rich minerality to wines. It’s laid out for perfect sun exposure and has a 20 mile vista down to the Petaluma Wind Gap, providing cool nights and foggy mornings, ideal conditions for growing premium wine grapes.

Over the past 10 years, increasingly, we have developed a focus at Kick Ranch on Rhone grape varieties. For many reasons — they offer a diversity of grapes that we enjoy growing and learning about, they make wines we especially enjoy — they seem to fit best the terroir of Kick Ranch and because they find a home with many fine winemakers in Sonoma and Napa for whom we are delighted to grow grapes.

It takes time to learn the potential of a vineyard site — what’s unique about its soils, its climate and growing conditions, what areas have rockier soils stress one variety more than another, which varieties fare better at the bottom of rolling hills where an early season frost can occur, which crop levels will yield optimum fruit. At Kick Ranch, learning about this sense of place, what some have called the “geography of flavor” and what the French sum up as terroir, is an ongoing process. In fact, in recent years, we have replanted and “t-budded” several acres of wines to grow more Rhone grapes to better express the potential of Kick Ranch as a signature vineyard for premium winemakers.

The other pages on this Web site will tell you more about Kick Ranch and its history, about who we are, what we grow and the wineries who buy our grapes.

Thank you for visiting our Web site. I invite your comments and questions about Kick Ranch.

Dick Keenan