RANCHO PARRALITO VINEYARD
Parralito means "Little Vine" in Spanish, so it seemed almost preordained that Rancho Parralito was destined to become one of the first working vineyards in Los Cabos. When the owners of the ranch, Wendy Rudell & Charles Free, found a very thick old vine growing over the arbor of the original ranch house in 1996, they started investigating its history & origin. The vine, 25 inches diameter, was anything but small, and after some research it was discovered to have originated from 400 year old Missionary stock that the original Jesuits preists had brought to Baja from Spain to make sacrament wine in their efforts to establish missions and tame the hostile Pericu indians.
A VINEYARD IS BORN
This original Missionary vine became the first stock that Wendy & Charlie experimented with, and with a little help from some local wine experts, were able to produce their first batch of Rancho Parralito wine. After their first trial run with the original grape stock, Wendy and Charlie also began planting traditional grape stock varieties, such as cabernet, sauvignon, merlot, zinfandel, grenache, cab franc and more. They also began experimenting with grafting grape stock, and were able to successfully graft several varieties of standard grape to the original Missionary vine stock and made a wine blended from the crossbred grapes. Although their initial efforts resulted in a well received blend of locally made wines, they knew they still needed help from from the experts if they were going to succeed to the next level.
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THEIR FRIENDS
To their good fortune, Roy Stock of the Distillery and Harold Osborn of the La Fuente winery in Todos Santos came to their rescue. They contributed their state of the art knowledge, wine making technology & experience, and also introduced them to Jeff Newton, a professional vineyard consultant from California. As a result of their valuable input 6 assistance, Wendy and Charlie were able to grow some refined varieties of red grape that they successfully blended with stock from the original grapevine. In 2017 season, their blend of grafted granache grapes with the original Mission grapes produced 6 cases of a very pleasing sparkling rose named Don Carlos Cabron that became popular at local wine tastings in los Cabos.
EXPANSION OF VINEYARD AND RANCH TOURS
A result of their highly successful 2017 wine season, an expansion of the vineyard is underway with an additional 2000 square meters of grapes, and sometime in early 2018 tours of the historic ranch, vineyard, & winemaking process will begin from all the major Los Cabo Resorts.
RANCHO PARRALITO VINYARD GALLERY
