Mathis Vineyard History
Today you'd never know Mathis Vineyard had once been a wild hillside above Sonoma Valley. But I'm getting ahead of the story...
In the beginning
After many years at Ravenswood, I scraped together enough to purchase a 7.5 acre lot at the end of the 1990s. It had not been a vineyard in its previous life. So I spent two years clearing the land of a great deal of rhyolite rocks before planting could begin.
Did I mention there were a lot of rocks?
Vineyard perimeter trees
Mathis Vineyard is surrounded by many beautiful evergreens ─ principally live oaks.
Here are some of the other oaks (sans draping moss) that border the vineyard. There are also a number of manzanitas with their deep rust-colored bark, which are clustered throughout the property.
The rest of the history (as I like to say) is in the bottle. Now, back to my tractor. 
To learn more, here's a short video shot just ahead of the 2013 harvest in early September (very early this year):