Making Wine in a Hostile Climate on Sonoma's Coast

January 18, 2006
The Pour
Making Wine in a Hostile Climate on Sonoma's Coast

By ERIC ASIMOV
TIMBER COVE, Calif.

IT'S the rare morning along the Sonoma County coast when you don't wake up in a fog. From the cliffs of this hamlet on the Coast Highway, you can hear the Pacific crashing on the craggy shore. You just can't see it through the mist. It's a wild, beautiful, out-of-the-way place, perfect for whale watching, collecting driftwood or beholding mesmerizing sunsets. But wine? Fine for drinking, but nobody in his right mind would plant a vineyard here.

Of course, sanity has never been a prerequisite for the wine business. Anybody who has ever struggled up the precipitous, death-defying slope of a vineyard in the Mosel or Côte-Rôtie recognizes that point right away. So it is that more and more serious grape growers have abandoned common sense to buy land and put in vineyards along the Sonoma coast, despite the fog, the incessant spring and fall rains that can destroy a crop and the isolation that requires many people to generate their own electricity.

None of the small growers expect to make a fortune on their wine, unless someday they sell a successful brand to a big corporation. They are in it for the extraordinary wines that these challenging conditions can produce.

These vineyards are not on the edge of the ocean, but two to five miles inland, on ridges high enough that the fog dissipates in time for the grapes to get morning sun. But others are even closer to the coast, close enough to feel the sea winds and to smell the brine. Mostly they are planted with pinot noir, a grape that is finicky and difficult to grow in the best of conditions. Here, growers obtain a tiny yield at best, half of what they might hope for in a sunnier, saner region. They have also planted chardonnay, and, notably, a bit of syrah too, though the temperature is too cool for grapes like cabernet sauvignon and merlot.

Among the newcomers are small, idealistic operations like Peay Vineyards near tiny Annapolis; Failla and Fort Ross Vineyards near Cazadero, and also established names like Pahlmeyer, Peter Michael Winery, Kendall-Jackson, Joseph Phelps Vineyards and Benziger Family Winery, none of which have started selling wine made in these vineyards They join established operations like Flowers, which has three vineyards just a little more than a mile from the ocean, and small boutique producers like Williams Selyem, Marcassin, Kistler and Martinelli, whose wines from coastal vineyards are practically impossible to taste unless you have a coveted spot on their mailing lists or are willing to pay a few hundred dollars in a restaurant.

The extraordinary potential of the coastal wines first became apparent in the late 1980's, when Williams Selyem began producing ground-breaking pinot noirs from pioneering vineyards like Summa, near the town of Bodega, and Hirsch, just up the ridge from here.

Thomas Brown, who in 2001 bought 40 acres near Annapolis, north of here toward Mendocino County, is one of many who found inspiration from the 1988 Williams Selyem Summa Vineyard pinot noir.

"I had never tasted anything like that before from California," said Mr. Brown, 33, who planted 14 acres of pinot noir in his Ridgetop Vineyard and plans to release his first commercial vintage in 2007 under a label to be decided.

The Sonoma coast pinot noirs have since shown themselves to be among California's best and most distinctive wines, dense and concentrated without being heavy, full of dark fruit and earth flavors and a singular structure of tightly wound acidity. The best chardonnays are simultaneously rich yet taut, with lively acidity and citrus and mineral flavors. And though only a minute amount of syrah has been made, the best show a true, delicious Rhone-like character, highly unusual in California.

Efforts to grow grapes in this area date to the 1940's and perhaps before, but the first successful coastal grape growers began planting in the late 1970's and early 80's. Land then was cheap and easily available, and this rugged coastline, with more sea lions than humans and just a few ghostly crossroads towns on the ridges, appealed to many back-to-nature types, who began turning old sheep ranches and apple orchards into vineyards. In the last 10 years, the trickle has become a flood, with dozens of vineyards going in from the area south of the Russian River around Bodega and Occidental, up across the river through Cazadero and Fort Ross and as far north as Annapolis near the Gualala River.

While the soils and climates offer the prospect for greatness, they also hold the potential for disaster. Growers in the sunny flats in Napa Valley, for example, have to fight to keep their yields below four or five tons an acre. Any higher, and the grapes will lose concentration.

Here, a ton and a half is considered a successful harvest, two tons extraordinary. And there are the bad years, like 2005, when intense June rains practically wiped out the grapes just as they were beginning to emerge on the vines. Many growers were lucky to achieve half a ton an acre, a figure that David Hirsch of Hirsch Vineyard called an economic disaster.

Eric Sussman of Radio-Coteau, a new winery that buys grapes from several different coastal producers, makes a peppery, smoky syrah from the new Cherry Camp Vineyard near Freestone. Last year, he was not able to pick the grapes until Nov. 1, well into the risky fall season when the rains come back after a summer hiatus. Risk seems too inadequate a word for the hazards here.

"In properties like this there's no margin for error," said Mike Benziger, general partner of Benziger Family Winery, which in 2002 began planting a vineyard near Bodega, along the coast south of the Russian River. "It's berry-by-berry, cluster-by-cluster farming."

Mr. Benziger's vineyard, which he started to plant in 2002 on an old sheep pasture, is adjacent to the new Kistler vineyard.

"We have 24 acres of plantable land, but it was so expensive we stopped at 10 acres," he said. He attributes the high price - $70,000 an acre - partly to regulatory issues that make it difficult to plant a new vineyard without lawyers and hearings, and partly to the region's seclusion, which makes a time-consuming adventure of getting deliveries or repairs. He has yet to make any wine from this vineyard, though he has sold grapes to Radio-Coteau. By contrast, when David Hirsch began planting his vineyard in 1980, he spent no more than $4,000 an acre.

"That wouldn't get you through the paperwork today," he said. Adding to the challenge is opposition from longtime residents, who feel that vineyards and winemakers threaten the distance they have tried so hard to put between themselves and society. Near Annapolis, tough new regulations concerning tree clearing, erosion control and environmental impact are a serious obstacle to winemakers.

"It's just going to grind the whole thing to a halt, which is what the folks out there want," said Mr. Brown of Ridgetop Vineyard, who said he has given up on adding to the 14 acres he's already planted. "I think we'll just stick with that and be done with all the fighting."

Aside from the legal battles, it takes a special sort of determination to hazard the coastal life. Two brothers, Nick and Andy Peay, found exactly the sort of hilltop land they were looking for, 80 acres near Annapolis with the trees already cleared, and began planting their vineyard in 1998, before tougher regulations were enacted. The land included a drafty old house, home for Nick Peay and his wife, Vanessa Wong, who is also the winemaker. Coyote and bobcats prowl the territory, electricity can fail in a high, howling wind, and the nearest grocery store is 45 minutes from the town of Annapolis, population 75. Andy Peay, who is in charge of marketing, lives in Healdsburg, more than an hour away.

Like most of the coast grape growers, the Peays decided that it would be too difficult and expensive to construct a winery in such an isolated, rugged place. So they built theirs in an industrial park in Cloverdale, also an hour away.

"It makes for an awful lot of driving," Andy Peay said.

Still, with 48 acres now planted, Peay Vineyards is making wines of rare intensity and precision. While still exploring the stylistic potential of the vineyard, Ms. Wong has turned out pinot noirs that combine lightness with intensity, and crisp attractive chardonnays. The Peay wines made from Rhone grapes shine, like beautifully spicy syrahs and a 2004 viognier, with aromas of minerals, honey and flowers.

South of Annapolis near Cazadero, Ehren Jordan, the winemaker for Turley Cellars - which is known for its big, burly zinfandels - planted a small vineyard in the late 1990's on a ridge once logged for redwoods. Today, he has 10 acres and sells wines made from his own and purchased grapes under the Failla label, named for his wife, Anne-Marie Failla. His chardonnays and pinot noirs are lean and Burgundian, but the star of the Failla line is his estate syrah, a lively, peppery Rhone-style wine that is one of the best California syrahs.

Mr. Jordan, who lives in Calistoga in the Napa Valley, makes his wines at the Turley facility not far from there. On the coast, only Flowers has constructed a winery that resembles the sort of structures tourists are used to visiting in other parts of California. It's a testament to the resources that the owners, Walt and Joan Flowers, accumulated in the nursery business before they began planting their Camp Meeting Ridge Vineyard in 1991.

Growers here like to call their region the "true coast," to distinguish it from the deceptive label designation "Sonoma Coast," an American Viticultural Area (or A.V.A.) so vast and misleading that it includes vineyards east of Santa Rosa and Petaluma, dozens of miles from the coast, with entirely different characteristics.

"A.V.A.'s are pretty useless," said Ted Lemon, who makes pinot noir and chardonnay under the Littorai label. "That's why we use vineyard designations."

Mr. Lemon buys grapes from the hills of Sonoma and Mendocino, which he calls the "true North Coast." He made his first coastal pinot noir from the Hirsch Vineyard in 1994.

"It took us until 1997 to find other pinot we wanted, from the Theriot Vineyard, which shows you how little there was," he said.

Littorai wines aim for subtlety and purity rather than hit-you-over-the-head power. His pinot noirs from the Hirsch Vineyard north of the Russian River seem more structured and slightly coarser than his pinots from the Theriot Vineyard near Bodega, south of the river, which seem smoother. "I do think north of the river has a tendency toward firmer wines," he said.

Years like 2005 can shake the confidence of bigger companies like Joseph Phelps. In the last few years Phelps has planted two vineyards along the coast with chardonnay and pinot noir, and is abandoning its sources for those grapes in the Carneros region to focus solely on the Sonoma coast. It's a daunting prospect for a company that values consistency and predictability.

"The low yields concern me greatly," said Craig Williams, the director of winemaking at Phelps. "It makes it more inconsistent and expensive."

In the Napa Valley, where Phelps has its headquarters, winemakers can afford to be nonchalant at times, he said, but not on the Sonoma coast.

"It really is on the frontier," Mr. Williams said. "It's an hour away but it feels like it's on the other side of the planet."


Copyright 2006The New York Times Company