trousseau.

On April 16, 2025 — a bright, breezy spring day atop Burnt Hill — we planted our first acre of Trousseau. That’s nearly 2,000 baby vines tucked straight into a living cover of Turkey Red Winter Wheat, true to our polyculture paradise M.O.

This is a variety we’ve dreamt about growing. A grape with a little mystery. A little nerve. A little wildness around the edges.

Native to the Jura region of eastern France, Trousseau demands the right conditions to thrive: plenty of sunlight, a steady breeze, and rocky soils that challenge its roots to dig deep. But when it’s happy, the wines are unlike anything else. Ethereal and lifted, yet earthy and wild at the edges — like if Cab Franc and Pinot Noir had a scrappier, more free-spirited cousin.

Trousseau wines hum with energy: wild strawberry, cherry pit, crushed herbs, dried rose, forest floor. And often this subtle signature of white pepper and dusty minerality — that beautiful calling card.

It’s a grape that tastes like where it comes from.

And that’s exactly why we think it belongs at Burnt Hill.

When I first floated the idea of planting Trousseau to our viticulture consultant, the one and only Lucie Morton, her eyes lit up. “I wouldn’t recommend this variety for any of my other clients,” she told me. “But for you — at Burnt Hill — I love it.”

Out came her Pierre Galet handbook — the legendary French ampelographer who literally wrote the book on grapevines. She read the description aloud. We smiled.

It was settled pretty quickly that Trousseau wouldn’t work just anywhere at Burnt Hill — only at the very top of the ridge, in the driest, rockiest soil, farthest away from wet soil and late-winter cold air. It’s the harshest site we farm. And that’s exactly why we love it for Trousseau.

We debated rootstock — 101-14 vs. 3309 — eventually landing on 3309 to make sure the vines had enough vigor to reach deep into the skeleton of this hill and pull what they need from the earth.

As for clone selection, we went with 0010.1 — a “Bastardo” clone — Lucie’s personal favorite. Bastardo being the Portuguese name for Trousseau. We were in business.

My interest in Trousseau really took off after tasting Forlorn Hope’s ODB Trousseau Noir. Their description pretty much says it all:

"The light color of our Trousseau is one of the hallmarks of this clonal selection from the Jackson Vineyard. The skins of these grapes are thin and lightly hued. But don't let the color fool you — this wine is wonderfully intriguing with notes of watermelon rind, ripe strawberries, mushrooms, and Italian bitters, and has plenty of grip to give it amazing texture."

Even cooler is the story of how some of California’s earliest Trousseau vines trace back to the Jackson Research Station, established during the Gold Rush era of the Sierra Foothills. In 1849, alongside the miners and the chaos, people were planting vineyards to feed their communities. That station — abandoned, overgrown, forgotten — was rediscovered in the 1950s by a UC Davis professor. Against all odds, over 130 grape cultivars had survived untended for 60 years, weathering wildlife, drought, and neglect — emerging stronger, more disease resistant, and somehow still alive.

I love that story. It feels exactly like the kind of grit and resilience we admire in wine grapes — and in farming.

So here we are — in 2025 — planting Trousseau at Burnt Hill. Our little slice of east coast beauty. Our attempt to steward something rare and wild into the future.

We planted the vines using a GPS-guided tree planter, with the help of our friend Andy Challen at Benchmark. They’ll be trained on a high-density vertical shoot positioning system — precise, tight, intentional.

Only time will tell if our homework, instincts, and obsession were right.

We’ll farm these vines with care and attention — just like we do with everything here — and one day, if all goes to plan, we’ll harvest the first crop of Burnt Hill Trousseau. And when that day comes, you can bet it’ll ferment and age in Ash wood foeders crafted from trees grown right here on this farm.

One way or another, we believe something magical is in the pipeline.

And maybe, if we’re lucky, sometime around 2030, we’ll all be sitting on this hill, drinking estate-grown Trousseau that tastes exactly like Burnt Hill. Bold, wild, alive.

Just the way we like it.