The Mount Eden grown on Hirsch Vineyards came from the old Martin Ray block now part of Mt. Eden Vineyard and Winery in Saratoga, CA. These old and heavily virused vines were propagated from ones brought from Burgundy by Paul Masson in the 1880’s. We grafted the Mt. Eden in 1989 onto S04 rootstock in the Old Vineyard that had been budded to Riesling originally. A lot of work has been done in our Mt Eden blocks to select the least infected wood which helps with even maturity of the fruit at harvest. We like the Mt. Eden for its spicy aromas, wonderful structure, and its individuality. This is not commercial, cleaned up “plant material”. Wonderful vineyard designate wines based on our Mt. Eden have come from Littoral and Kistler, among others.
The Pommard comes from 1000 self-rooted vines we planted in 1980. When some years later I asked the friend who gave us the plants where they were from, he thought they came from Oregon, but wasn’t sure. A few years back, Lucy Morton, an ampelologist, identified the vines in the mother block as being both Pommard 4 and Wädenswil. She said the Oregon state nursery mixed the two when they filled their orders in the 1970’s with the result that many of the older Oregon (and California) wineries have both clones. We used wood from the original 1000 vines to bud rootstock in many of our fields, including #8 and # 5 which gave us the fruit for the 2002 estate wine. The Pommard over the years has been the significant clone in many of the signature Hirsch Vineyard designates, especially from Williams Selyem.
David Hirsch