Edwards Vineyard & Cellars September 2020

But where are the clones?
Send in the clones. 
Don’t bother, they’re here.
Yes, the clones are here, right here, in San Diego, clones to the left of me, clones to the right of me – and clones in my wine refrigerator!  Life is good.
My first exposure to a quality Ramona wine came from a small wine shop in the Flower Hill Mall, and it came from Edwards Vineyard & Cellars.  We reviewed them some time ago, so it was certainly time to revisit Beth and Victor to see how they were handling the virus.  So, I looked up their website and lo and behold they listed a Syrah clone, specifically clone 383.  This would be our second opportunity to taste a Syrah single clone wine, and given how much we liked the Estrella clone from Melville we were really up for the visit.
Turns out that Saturday was harvest day, and when we arrived at the winery they were putting the grape bunches in this machine.  We’ll talk about that later – wines first.  The wine list is short, just five wines (one rose and four reds), all from Syrah or Petite Syrah grapes, including the clone 383 Syrah.  Note the vintages – 2014.  If you check on my review of Gershon Bachus, they make a big deal of aging their wines for five years before offering them for sale.

The two clones are good.  The two clones are very good.  The two clones are very, very good.  But there is trouble, right here in Ramona.  A condition unique to Syrah grapes has attacked Edwards 383 clone grape vines.  Yields are down, so not sure how long the 383 clone will be available.  It may spread to the 877 plants….
Now on to the machine.  Grape bunches are dumped into the hopper at the top of the machine, where they are somewhat crushed and the stems separated.  The must comes out the front and is collected in buckets, then dumped again into the hopper to complete the crushing.  After the second crushing, the must goes into the shed, seen in the picture below on the left, where it is dumped into fermentation plastic fermentation tanks.  The stems come out the back, which they then feed to their goats.  Pretty neat machine!