Austin Hope

After years of farming Austin began to understand the importance of the vineyard to the wine. He immediately started replanting his family's vineyard on the west side of Paso Robles, in the Templeton Gap area with four different clones of Syrah from France. The vines are planted in high density spacing, ranging from 5'x 5' to 6'x 4' and yielding 1700 to 1900 plants per acre. This is a huge contrast from the normal vineyards found in Paso Robles which range from only 600 to 800 plants per acre. Austin believes that increasing the number of plants per acre and lowering their yield, results in very intense and complex wines. Other varieties found in the vineyard include Grenache and Mourvèdre ; all of these are clones of some of the finest vines in Europe. Farming has always been extremely important to Austin and believes that winemaking is only a small percentage of a great wine. The soils found in the west side area of Paso Robles have an exceedingly beneficial impact on the grapes and are very unique to the area. The vineyard, being only a mere 20 miles from the Pacific Ocean, has soils that are very rocky with high amounts of clay and a large percentage of advantageous limestone. These “calcareous” soils greatly contribute to the elegant, fine, grainy tannins that are found in the Austin Hope and Westside Red wines.

close x