CAST occupies a forested bench above Dry Creek Valley, on a hillside its founders bought after a single sunset convinced them. Jack and Ann Seifrick, Ohio natives who built careers in Texas, came through on a 2011 bike trip, watched the light drop behind Bradford Mountain, and assembled some fifty friends as investor-owners to buy the property; the name marks the spell the site cast that evening. The estate Grey Palm Vineyard was certified organic, and winemaker Ashley Herzberg keeps production to roughly 3,500 cases. It is a working hillside farm first, a tasting room second.
Grey Palm Estate Zinfandel: the heart of the house, estate-grown, organically farmed Zinfandel off the Grey Palm hillside, the wine the property was planted for.
Old Vine Zinfandel, Watson Vineyard: from a neighboring block roughly thirty years older than the estate vines, a built-in study in what age does to Dry Creek Zin.
Estate Petite Sirah: dark, structured, and concentrated; one of CAST’s earliest acclaimed bottlings.
Russian River Chardonnay & Pinot Noir: cool-climate fruit brought down from the RRV, a deliberate counterpoint to the estate reds.
CAST farms its Grey Palm Estate Vineyard organically and sources Cabernet from Alexander Valley to round out a wide, exploratory portfolio of roughly 3,500 cases a year. Wines are sold largely direct, through the tasting room and club.
Tastings are seated and unhurried, set on the hillside perch the winery calls its beach, a bench beneath a lone Canary Island date palm, the Grey Palm the estate vineyard takes its name from, looking down the rows toward Bradford Mountain. The standard flight, the Exploration, moves through five current releases; the Winemaker’s Perch seats private groups of up to ten above the same view. The estate fruit comes off the Grey Palm hillside, with older-vine Zinfandel from the adjoining Watson Vineyard, whose plantings predate CAST’s own by about thirty years. The pour is in no hurry.
