March 7, 2001
Winemakers Here Unfettered by Foreign EdictsWho gives a damn about broccoli? Broccoli growers do, I guess. But poets, writers, philosophers, physicians do not (not in italics, please) wax poetic over broccoli, or other fruits and vegetables, like they do wine. Wine, like broccoli, is an agricultural product, but unlike broccoli growing, the grape business-growing and making wine-is what I call glamour agribusiness.
The pastoral vineyard land is calling out to yuppie millionaires from Los Angeles and the Bay Area to all parts of coastal California. Also, earth muffins-people who love the earth-and people who love plants and people who just love growing things are also attracted to viticulture. We see people moving into the Santa Barbara County. And they want to plant grapes-vineyards of all shapes and sizes. And some small plots are producing exceptional fruit.
Bruce and Beth Vandale are a terrific example of committed, quality growers. They farm roughly three acres of one of the top clones of sangiovese on their Santa Ynez acreage. They have done their homework, and have a reasonably high density planting on their sloping vineyard.
When they harvest, the wine is made for them by veteran winemaker at Sanford, Bruno D'Alfonso, at a facility over in Buellton. When you couple the topnotch winemaking talent with the well tended fruit from their vineyard, you end up with a great wine-one of the best examples of sangiovese I have ever tasted.
Sangiovese, by the way, is a red Italian varietal-the great red grape of Chianti and Tuscany in Italy. Chianti, of course, is a very popular wine in the United States and many consumers think it is the name of a grape, which it is not. Chianti is an appellation, a place; and wines that are produced in Chianti that reach certain standards are allowed to be called Chianti. The main grape in Chianti, which is a blend, is sangiovese.
Several lesser grapes are required to be used in Chianti. Being required to use some of these lesser grapes, particularly trebbiano, is sort of like "featherbedding" in this country-a legislative edict forced by the powerful growers, which, thankfully, winemakers don't have to deal with in the United States. Here, the winery can simply make its own rules (for there are no rules) or tell the grower to go to hell. In Italy, the way producers get around the arcane laws of Chianti is produce what is known among consumers as "Super Tuscans." These wines are usually blends of sangiovese and merlot and cabernet sauvignon.
Ultimately, I think the freedom winemakers have in California and the United States-freedom from crazy restraints in appellation laws which exist in both Italy and France-will make us reign supreme in the world of fine wine and spirits.
Right now we are seeing great white varietal Rhone-style blends being produced at Tablas Creek in the western end of the Paso Robles appellation of San Luis Obispo County. These blends contain viognier, roussanne and marsanne, a combination which could not be produced as an appellation controlee wine in the Rhone.
Similarly, cognac producers must distill from an underwhelming grape called ugni blanc, the French name for trebbiano. Little wonder that the sublime California "cognac style" alambic brandies produced by Germain-Robin in Mendocino County are a vastly superior brandy to even the top French cognacs. Distiller Hubert Germain-Robin has the freedom to produce his alambic brandy from noble grapes like pinot noir and sauvignon blanc brought to ripeness in the hot California sunshine of Mendocino County.
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American spirit-nothing in the world like it! It was two guys from Cupertino here in California who introduced to the world the first personal computer. Macs are a product of American imagination and unique ingenuity-not products of French or Japanese thinking.
This "can do" optimism is manifest in people like Bruce and Beth Vandale, producing world class sangiovese in the Santa Ynez Valley.
And it's found in pioneering visionaries like Richard Sanford who pioneered pinot noir on Santa Rosa Road, and Bob Lindquist who had the vision that some of the best syrah in the world would grow on a hillside in Bien Nacido Vineyard, or John Alban who envisioned syrah and grenache in the Edna Valley. There's the newcomers who have "escaped" the encumbrances of the old world, like the Perrin family of Chateauneuf-du-Pape who are making great wine in the Paso Robles area with American partner, Robert Haas, and Frenchman Hubert Germain-Robin making world class cognac with partner Ansley Coale, Jr. in Mendocino County.
Bob Senn lives in the rain-soaked Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
