The other day, I finally had a chance to chat by phone with Rich Pato, a local grower whose grapes have been made into wines Kathy and I have enjoyed for years. And now it turns out that we live about a mile and a half from Pato Vineyards here in Oakley.

Originally planted in 1896, back in the days when Oakley was a convenient railhead for shipping grapes back east, Rich’s plot comprises 26 acres planted to old-vine Petite Sirah, Zinfandel and Mourvèdre. Located directly across busy Empire Avenue from Stan and Gertie Planchon’s vineyard, it’s also a textbook study in Oakley’s past and present: Directly adjacent to majestic vines looking forward to their 115th birthday, there’s an ongoing engineering-and-asphalt development designed to widen Empire to double its traffic capacity. From “railhead” to “Road work ahead. Fines double in work zones” in a scant hundred years. As someone who makes his livelihood farming this single plot of vineyard acreage, Rich Pato describes the seemingly never-ending Empire-building as “a pain in the neck.”

Over the years that Kath and I recognized the vineyard designation, we were most familiar with “Pato Vineyard” appearing on specific Rosenblum bottlings. When founder Dr. Kent cashed out his Rosenblum chips several years ago, selling to drinks doge Diageo, the new owners continued the love. Grape contracts come and go, ebb and flow, and sometimes the big boys, instead of putting the hammer down on the grower, can see the fruit for what it is: exceptional.

Rich Pato (BTW: pronounced “PAW-toe”) tells me that, currently, he’s contracted out his Petite to Diageo, his Zin and Mourvèdre to Napa-based Orin Swift (we talked about their “Saldo” bottling a couple of posts ago), and one little block o’Zinfandel to Turley Cellars, who, I’m discovering, have their fingerprints on a lot of Oakley Zin. Hmmm.

Don’t know how she did it, but Kath got her mitts on a 2007 Rosenblum Pato Vineyard Petite Sirah. It’s a wondrously inky-black, opaque pour into the glass. There’s pronounced cocoa, earth, tar and spice on the nose. In the mouth, it’s all elegant raciness of blueberry and integrated acidity on a long, long finish. Great stuff.