Planted in the 1890s in the deep sandy soils of the Contra Costa Delta—where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers converge—this historic vineyard is among California’s most distinctive and resilient sites. The ungrafted, head-trained vines thrive in Dehli blow sand, a rare soil type that has protected them from phylloxera and allowed them to remain on their original rootstock for over a century.
Turley’s block features vines more than 120 years old, planted to a mixed field blend of Zinfandel, Carignane, Mourvèdre (Mataro), and Palomino. Farmed dry and harvested by hand, the site yields wines of singular character that stand apart from more typical expressions of these varieties.
Fermented with native yeasts and aged for 15 months in barrel (80% used oak, 20% new; primarily French with a portion of American oak), the wine is bottled unfined and unfiltered to preserve its authenticity.
The wine itself is unlike many richer Sonoma expressions of Zinfandel. There’s an ethereal quality to Evangelho — fragrant, lifted, elegant, and almost Pinot-like in character, with bright acidity and fine detail alongside the old-vine concentration.
