Coyote Canyon Vineyard

From a family of cattle and wheat farmers with deep roots in the agriculture of Washington State, third-generation farmer Mike Andrews and his father Bob before him raised cattle, irrigated hay, and pasture on 1100 acres of his family’s in the Horse Heaven Hills. In 1982, market conditions and high interest rates led Mike and Bob to replace the cattle operation with high-value cash crops such as sweet corn, asparagus, peas, beans. Mike’s kids even had a watermelon patch that eventually grew to 25 acres to raise money for college.

Mike and Bob planted their first wine grapes in 1995, only to see them frozen to the ground in the devastating winter freeze of 1996. After re-training the plants up to the trellis wires, then taking his first crop from the vines, they were heartened to learn that wine made from his young grapes earned a 90-point score in Wine Spectator, surely a harbinger of great things to come. Turning to Syrah, Mike planted his first block of this variety in 1999, and from the second crop on, this grape has been an outstanding performer for him and has dominated the blend of a well-known reserve Syrah. Syrah made from his grapes even earned a spot in the Top 100 Wines of the World in 2003.

Today Mike, father Bob, and oldest son Jeff, who is operations manager for the vineyard, grow more than 1100 acres of wine grapes, including 25 varieties, but it is undoubtedly the Syrah from Coyote Canyon Vineyard that shines brightest. The Syrah that they raise for AlmaTerra is from a small vineyard block where the vines struggle in Mikkalo series soils that are shallow to lime-cemented, shattered basalt bedrock, lending special character to this site. Yields are held to three tons per acre or less and all of the work is done by hand.

Notes on the AlmaTerra block of Syrah at Coyote Canyon

Planted: 1999 with grow tubes
Clone: ‘Sara Lee’
Crop level: 3 tons per acre
Irrigation: 13” added to an average of 7” annual rainfall
Training: Bilateral cordon with vertical shoot positioning; 30 clusters per vine
Other: ‘hands on the vines 7-8 times per year’; leaf stripping on morning sun side of vines; leaf petiole sampling for plant nutrition
Elevation: 1075 feet
Slope: 8%
Aspect: South-southwest
Soils: Mikkalo silt loam formed in loess 30 inches deep to lime-cemented broken-basalt bedrock
Climate: total precipitation in 2006 was 9.0 inches; mean summer temperature 72.5°F
Growing Degree Days in 2006: 2922