Karly Wines

Sadie Upton Zinfandel goes right back to the beginning of Karly winery. After dithering a few years, Buck decided to plant grapes and start a winery in 1979. As the first crush materialized, procuring grapes became a consideration. The nearby farm belonging to the Upton family had two plus acres of rugged old vines scratched into a rocky hillside by Sadie and John when they were newlyweds in 1922. It looked promising for producing good wine. A deal was made, and we have been buying Upton Zinfandel for twenty-nine years. The arrangement is passing into the second generation of the two families, and probably a third approaches.

Our first few Zins were largely from this vineyard. As our production increased the wine was increasingly lost in a large lot. So in 1986 we started bottling Sadie Upton Zinfandel by itself, and it is now a tradition with a large following. I have not tasted many rocks, but the signature of the vineyard is a smell and taste component, in addition to the grapes, that I can only describe as wet granite (from which the soil is weathered) after a rain. The wine has a very compact hard concentrated character. With only a few hundred cases produced each year, it does not stay around long.