Sycamore Creek Vineyards And Winery

Open: Year Round

Sycamore Creek was originally planted in the early 1900s with head-pruned Zinfandel and Carignane.  The soil is well- drained sandy-loam with deposits of sandstone.  The west edge of the vineyard is several hundred yards from the banks of  Uvas Creek, which feeds from the Santa Cruz Mountains and runs the length of the valley, eventually joining the Pajaro River south of Gilroy and draining into the Monterey Bay.

In 1977, a portion of the vineyard was replanted to Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon and trained in a head-pruned fashion and dry farmed.  The results are low yields and extremely high-quality wine grapes.  The remaining blocks of Zinfandel and Carignane were replanted to additional Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon in 1991 by the Morita family.

In the summer of 2005, just after the Holt family's first harvest of Cabernet, one remaining Zinfandel vine was found on the bank of Sycamore Creek.  Cuttings taken from this struggling vine were grafted at the Uvas Creek Vineyard site for material to replant a portion of Sycamore Creek to the original Zinfandel that was growing in the early 1900s.

The vineyard is located 12 miles inland from the Monterey Bay on the east side of the Santa Cruz Mountains.  The typical summer weather is morning fog which burns off by noon, warm days, and cool nights.  Both Sycamore Creek Vineyard and Uvas Creek Vineyard wine grapes rarely require any acid adjustments, a testament to the ideal winegrowing conditions of the area.