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Cool wines from a new California
By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer
There's still plenty of broccoli there, 26,000 acres producing almost $100-million worth of sturdy nutrition, and Santa Barbara broccoli is well regarded. But in the next year or two, as farmers add up their books, they'll find that grapes made still more money and that the success of pinot noir and chardonnay there provides a boast with more cachet: This is America's Burgundy. This impressive achievement is 30 years in the making and one that puts the county in the center of a new California. Now that we're well into a new millennium, smart wine lovers need to be aware of a new geography and at least some new names. Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, Santa anything is a good start. And don't forget San Luis Obispo.
The old California, Napa and Sonoma, is still there and home to great cabernet sauvignon and merlot and other Bordeaux grapes. There are other Californias as well: the cool northern areas in Mendocino, the Sierra Foothills and the vast mass production vineyards of the central valley. The more intriguing area is the long stretch from San Francisco down toward Los Angeles, known broadly on wine labels as Central Coast. The northern half around Monterey and the Santa Cruz mountains has been explored and exploited early on by visionaries like Martin Ray, David Bruce and Paul Draper and then by smart bulk producers. In the 1970s, another generation of explorers headed farther south. One of the first was Richard Sanford, a Navy veteran fresh from a Vietnam tour, hunting for an agricultural life and the Holy Grail of California winemaking: a place to grow pinot noir. The silky, elegant red wine of Burgundy had eluded most California winemakers in fabled Napa. "I thought that the problem was they were planting pinot where it was just too warm," said Sanford. A geographer by education, he started studying maps and climate data. The advantage on the central coast was that the mountain ranges and the valleys between them did not run north and south as they did along most of the west coast; they ran west to east, with one end open to the Pacific. Consequently, every day cool air and thick fog roll down the valleys. Sanford grabbed a thermometer, climbed in his car drove up and down the valleys, confirmed it and then started planting. Today the Sanford & Benedict vineyard is one of the area's most famous. His pinot noir shows true Santa Barbara style: sleek textures and flavors from raspberry to a broad hint of earth and pepper in the back, much closer to a Burgundy than more plummy California pinots. Other pioneers included Leonard Firestone, tire heir and diplomat, and his son, Brooks; Byron Ken Brown of Byron; Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat; and the king of the wild frontier himself, actor Fess Parker, coonskin star of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone and a dedicated wine grower.
Other big money and big producers are there as well; they've long bought grapes here for wine made up north and have now set up large wineries. The latest is Fetzer's Three Rivers brand. The smaller wineries, whose wines sell for $12 to $30 a bottle, are still a better buy, cheaper than some of California's most famous names -- and certainly cheaper than Burgundy. The wineries planted mostly on rangeland and hillsides in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties that was used for cattle and oil exploration and left most of the bottomland to the farmers of broccoli, strawberries, garbanzo beans and other crops. Wine grapes don't want fertile soil, growers point out; vines like rocky, stony soil underlain by well-drained layers that allow the vines to run deep and collect ample water. Again much like Burgundys. The weather may go Northern France one better: The heat and sun provide a long growing season with the extra hang time for ripening on the vines at the end of the summer, often weeks longer than in Burgundy. On the central California coast, vines can start to blossom in late January, and some grapes can be picked as late as November without risk of heavy rains or frost. A warning note about vintages on the south central coast. Most of the buzz about California vintages is based on the weather in Napa, which is often nothing like Santa Barbara's. "I pulled out an '89 for a friend from Napa, and he thought I was getting out my dregs," says one southern winemaker. "It was my best." Count '89, '90 and the '98s and '99s now on the market as the best of the central coast. Napa brags on '95, '97 and '99.
The cool Burgundian climate and the west-east aspect of valleys benefits chardonnay, which has had the opposite problem from pinot noir. It's an easy-going grape that grows almost anywhere, including the hottest areas of North America, and has become a ubiquitous cheap white wine. Most of the time chardonnay isn't a wine, it's a beverage, protests Clendenen. But not at places like the Bien Nacido vineyard in the Santa Maria Valley, where winemakers match chardonnay with the soil and climate it grew up with in the grand cru vineyards of Burgundy. "I don't believe you have to make a wine that's fruity at 2 years old," Clendenen says. "Great wines show their elegance, their breed and their complexity when they develop in the bottle." The winemakers who came south discovered more than Burgundy. They appear to have found a little bit of Germany, as cold as the northern Rhine and perfect for crisp riesling and gewurztraminer, and to have duplicated the Rhone region of France as well.
The variety of grapes growing here seems endless, -- there's even counoise for Provencal roses -- but there are important human ingredients. Vintners such as Sanford, Clendenen, Firestone and Brown are of the modern generation of Californians who put more faith in the basics of the vineyards than the tricks of the winery. They're finding the right places for the right grapes to prove them right. They are both traditionalists and experimenters. Their wines tend to be clean and pure, with more fruit than oak, in the style of the Northwest; the wines often have a lush texture, but it's not because of the processing, it's natural. Not that they're completely sober. They have a sense of abandon and innovation that fits plucky Australians or the surfer-hippie heritage of the California coast here. It shows in the marketing, too. Fess Parker is not afraid to hang a coonskin cap on his winery's reputation, and Sanford, who found the area as diverse in wildflowers as it is in grapes, puts more botanical prints on his labels than Georges duBoeuf. Clendenen, who wears his hair so long and curly he could wrestle as Louis XIV, credits himself on his labels as Mind Behind. "We were down here by ourselves, so you had to make a loud noise," Clendenen says. If they rejected standardization and anonymity, "We had to be loud, insistent and have something unique in the bottle." They do. And it sure beats broccoli. About central coast wineGeographyIn wine geography, the long stretch between San Francisco and Los Angeles is called the central coast. The southern half of that area is increasingly well-regarded, especially for its pinot noir, chardonnay and syrah. Here are some areas and wineries to help you find your way working from north to south. In each county the major vineyard areas or appellations (American Viticultural Areas or AVAs) are listed, followed by the names of wineries and vineyards there. Under U.S. labeling laws, if a wine label names a geographic area, 75 percent of the grapes used to make it must come from the named area. San Luis Obispo CountyPASO ROBLES: Arciera, Eberle, Justin, Meridian, J. Lohr, Peachy Canyon, Seven Peaks, Wild Horse. EDNA VALLEY: Edna Valley, Corbett Canyon ARROYO GRANDE: Talley, Laetitia, Maison Deutz. Santa Barbara CountySANTA MARIA VALLEY: Au Bon Climat, Byron, Cambria, Foxen, Io, Qupe, Bien Nacido vineyard. SANTA YNEZ: Babcock, Sanford, Firestone, Fess Parker, Zaca Mesa. Taste of the southBest recent vintages are 1989, 1991, 1998, 1999. Pinot noir from good makers on the central coast can be cellared for five to 10 years; chardonnay ages well too. TastingAu Bon Climat pinot blanc/pinot gris (50/50 blend), Bien Nacido Vineyard, 2000 vintage ($15.99): Slightly citrusy aroma, crisp and refreshing first taste broadens into a smooth lush drink with a surprisingly long, dry finish. Shames most pure pinot grigio (and a lot of chardonnays too). Byron pinot noir Santa Maria, 1999 ($18.99): Pinot in a light style with fresh berry and cherry flavors. A bit of pepper and silky mouth feel. A winning introduction to Santa Barbara and worth keeping. Edna Valley chardonnay, 1999 ($12.99): There's a pleasant vanilla aroma at the top, with a bit of peach and even more richness. Full mouth feel. A bargain taste of the benefits of a cool climate, that other regions can't touch for the same price. Sanford pinot noir, 1999 ($23.99): Strong hint of raspberries in the nose and on the palate, plus tastes of tea, spice and pepper with a smooth texture. Tannic enough to store. Good now; even better later. Zaca Mesa Z Gris, 2000 vintage ($9.99): Don't blush. This is a rose of Rhone grapes with more style than most merlots. Nose and taste have a bit of cherry at first, yets its a dry graceful wine with clean easy-to-drink texture. A picnic in a bottle. - Chris Sherman
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From the Times Taste section From the features wire |
Indeed the eastern sections of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties farther from the Pacific, particularly the town of Paso Robles, are warmer and provide a full range of the conditions in the Rhone, the ancestral home of syrah/shiraz. In some parts, wineries like Qupe can make peppery cool-climate syrah; many others make juicy, jammy ones like Australian shiraz. They also succeed with grenache and carignane, as well as the softer, peachy Rhone whites such as rousanne, marsanne and viognier.
