California's Jordan Vineyard & Winery has sold a 109ha site containing 45ha of vineyards to the Native American tribe of Lytton Rancheria for $13.3m.
Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chardonnay are grown at the Alexander Valley floor site, near Jordan’s main 486ha property, from which grapes from higher elevation hillsides and benchlands are sourced
Jordan CEO John Jordan said, ‘I had to accept the reality that it isn’t a good business decision to focus resources and energy on farming a piece of land that is no longer capable of delivering the quality of grapes we demand.’
Lytton Rancheria is a 270-member tribe whose holdings include the San Pablo Lytton Casino, commercial buildings and land in the Sonoma County towns of Santa Rosa and Windsor.
The tribe’s attorney, Larry Stidham, was reported in the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat saying that the tribe doesn’t have development plans for the property and that it is possible it will remain vineyard land.
‘The tribe was looking at economic diversification,’ he said, adding that their main interest in purchasing the parcel is because it is ‘close to the land that was illegally taken away from them by the federal government.’
The vineyard is close to the tribe’s historic rancheria, dissolved by the US government in 1958. The tribe successfully petitioned the government to restore their tribal status in 1991.
Written by David Furer
