Limerick Lane occupies a rocky, well-drained corner at the northeastern edge of the Russian River Valley, just south of Healdsburg, where the AVA runs up against the hills and the fog stops short. In an appellation built on Pinot Noir, the estate is famous instead for Zinfandel, specifically the 1910 Block, a field blend the Italian Del Fava family planted that year and that still bears fruit. Brothers Tom and Michael Collins bought the land in 1977 and began bottling under the Limerick Lane name in the mid-1980s; Jake Bilbro revitalized it after 2009, and the 2012 Zinfandel landed at number twelve on Wine Spectator’s Top 100. The site is distinctive enough to read like its own appellation.
1910 Block Zinfandel: from the original Del Fava planting, the oldest and most storied block on the estate.
Estate Cuvée: the flagship estate red.
Marquis Zinfandel: a blend drawing on historic vineyards including Bedrock, Maffei, and Monte Rosso.
Syrah–Grenache: Rhône-style reds from the rocky estate.
Dry-farmed and increasingly organic, Limerick Lane’s 2021 Zinfandels drew the highest collective scores of any Zinfandel producer in California from Wine Spectator.
The estate changed hands again in 2022, when Karen Francis DeGolia bought it, closing a circle that began in the early 1990s, when she was engaged to founder Tom Collins before his sudden death sent her into a career running the Oldsmobile division at General Motors and a vice-presidency at Ford. Winemaker Chris Pittenger, who trained under Helen Turley at Marcassin and spent eleven years making Rhône wines at Skinner, dry-farms the old vines as they were planted a century ago. Tastings are set outdoors among the rows, at wooden tables between the vines, without music. Some of these vines have outlasted Prohibition.
