Not in the least bit of danger from vehicle traffic, wild turkeys prattle across Wooden Valley Road. Along this lost and lonely, fifteen-mile-or-so rural route you will see a few vineyards, some orchards and some cows, an old schoolhouse and one winery. On the roadside, the sweet Wooden Valley School, established in 1853, is one of the only single-room schools in operation in California.
Nearly a thousand feet higher in elevation than the floor of the Napa Valley, Wooden Valley is also several degrees cooler, most days and nights, a perfect climate for growing Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese grapes on the hillsides around Altamura Vineyards and Winery.
Frank and Karen Altamura’s family has owned a 400-acre patch of Wooden Valley since 1855. Guarding the entrance to the winery, mossy old oaks and gigantic boulders are craggy backdrops for the rows of vines sweeping up into low hills. Frank likes to bundle visitors into his Korean War-era Army jeep and drive them around the bumpy roads through his vineyards and oak woods while explaining how dry farming, severe pruning and thinning of the fruit produces the intensely flavored grapes he likes for his 100% varietal Sangiovese. In the cool aging caves, the nose of the wine is of dried violets and lavender and the taste of dark chocolate, currant, and perhaps raspberry, with a cocoa finish. The Altimura Sangioveses have been compared to the legendary Brunellos of Montalcino, in Italy; and in fact, the rootstock was grafted with Brunello clones.
Beyond Altamura, going east, Wooden Valley Road becomes Suisin Valley Road, where a handful of wineries lie in the bucolic Suisin Valley AVA.
The article on this page is adapted from the book, Backroads of the California Wine Country by Karen Misuraca (www.karenmisuraca.com), published by Voyageur Press.
Photo Credit: The pictures on this page are by Lisa Moore. www.studioponderosa.com