CALIFORNIA: West Side Story

Many consumers associate good California wine solely with Napa Valley. While Napa attracts the money and the glamour, it is far from being the most dynamic of California’s wine regions.

Moreover, very high prices demanded for the so-called “cult” wines have allowed the other producers to charge a premium for their wines, even though in many cases the quality hardly justifies such price tags.

Nonetheless, the best Napa wines are magnificent. In this relatively small valley Cabernet Sauvignon rules supreme; no other region can touch it when it comes to rich, magisterial, long-lived Cabernets, although Sonoma can come close.

Because the Bordeaux varieties fetch the highest prices in Napa, other varieties that were once grown in the valley are fast disappearing. That’s no tragedy: Napa can produce, for example, good Sauvignon Blanc, but it can’t match Napa Cabernet for profundity and character.

No, the excitement lies elsewhere these days. To the north, Mendocino was once known for its robust Zinfandel and Chardonnay, but today its cool coastal zones such as Anderson Valley have won a fine reputation for sparkling wines and for Pinot Noir.

Roederer astutely chose the valley for its California operation, which routinely produces some of America’s most stylish sparkling wines; and Duckhorn, a Napa stalwart, has planted Pinot here for its Goldeneye label, one of Mendocino’s finest. The climate also suits Alsatian varieties, and Navarro is unquestionably California’s finest producer of Riesling and Gewurztraminer, in both dry and noble sweet versions.

Commercially, Mendocino is fairly marginal, and its best known winery, Fetzer, sources most of the grapes from outside the region. More dynamic is Sonoma County, much larger and with far more diverse microclimates than Napa. Consequently hotter areas, such as the Dry Creek and Alexander Valleys, produce what are surely California’s best Zinfandels, from wineries such as Ridge, Seghesio, and Ravenswood.

But the valleys are also stuffed with smaller producers such as Mauritson and Dashe that make rich and complex Zinfandels that are less well known (and less expensive) but of excellent quality.

Although certain single-vineyard Zinfandels from top producers fetch rather high prices, the variety still doesn’t have the commercial cachet of Cabernet or Pinot Noir, which means that the average price remains affordable. Moreover Sonoma is still rich in old-vine plantings, many of them established over a century ago, so wines of both quality and character are not that hard to find.

Penchant for Pinot

Not everyone feels a passion for Zinfandel, but almost everyone in California is crazy about Pinot Noir, and no region produces more subtle and intriguing Pinots than Russian River Valley and the Sonoma Coast.

Styles vary enormously: big rich opulent wines from producers such as Kosta Browne – sold, with no vineyards and no home winery, for $40 million (£24.3m) in September! – to delicate, refined, more Burgundian styles from the likes of Littorai and Cobb. Somewhere in the middle are the numerous single-vineyard Pinots, broad shouldered but elegant, from Hartford, Dehlinger and Dutton-Goldfield.

As with so many Californian wines, the barrier to wider popularity is their high prices, ranging from $35 to $75 which, at the higher end, puts them in direct competition with premier cru Burgundy.

But there is no doubting the seriousness and quality of these wines. Enormous attention has been paid to location and to clonal selection, and a growing number of Sonoma vineyards are being farmed organically or biodynamically.

Nor are all the wines extravagantly priced. At a celebration this summer of Russian River Pinots that I attended, many of us were stunned by the quality of Kenwood’s 2007 Pinot, of which an astonishing 36,000 cases were produced, selling for under $18 a bottle.

Such bargains are thin on the ground, admittedly, but they do exist and are worth seeking out.

Being a large winery, Kenwood can practice economies of scale that allow the winery to present wines that offer, by Californian standards, good value for money. The same is true of a number of other wineries, many of them based in Sonoma Valley. These include St Francis, Château St Jean, and Kunde.

Continuing south beyond San Francisco to Monterey and the Salinas Valley, one comes to vast vineyards that are primarily source material for the state’s largest wineries. Tucked away on the side of the valley on more rugged and interesting soils is a fairly small district known as the Santa Lucia Highlands.

Pinot Noir and Syrah can excel from here, but the grapes are mostly sold to negociant wineries such as Siduri, Arcadian, and Testarossa. This is a growing trend in California: eager and ambitious winemakers, unable to afford the astronomical prices demanded for prime vineyards, buy or lease winery space and buy from top growers. (It certainly made the fortunes of Michael Browne and Dan Kosta.)

Further south, around Paso Robles, vineyards old and new have gained a reputation for sound if sometimes rustic Zinfandel and supple, approachable Cabernets. But the real action these days lies in the hilly zone known as the Westside, because it lies to the west of Highway 101 that links northern and southern California.

Wineries such as Justin showed some years ago how good the Bordeaux varieties could be from here, but newer wineries tend to specialise in Rhône varieties.

Wines from the Westside

It was the Perrin family of Château Beaucastel in Châteauneuf who were among the first to recognise the potential of the Westside. They created a nursery here, importing top quality cuttings of Rhône varieties.

They then founded their own winery, Tablas Creek, which produces delicious Rhône-style blends, and supplied plant material to most other wineries with similar ambitions. Today the hills are studded with mostly small wineries that can produce exceptional wines from Syrah and other varieties such as Grenache and Mourvèdre.

Frenchman Stephan Asséo of L’Aventure is among the best known, but he is far from the only one. The drawback of the wines can be their very high alcohol, although the best of them somehow retain enough balance so that the alcohol doesn’t show.

Wines from the Westside need to be selected with care: some still show ferocious tannins and mouth-burning alcohol. When they are good these Rhône-style wines and Zinfandels can be exceptional; when they are bad, they are horrid indeed.

Paso Robles is one of the sub-regions within San Luis Obispo County, but there are others. To the south are Edna Valley and Arroyo Grande, which are cooler areas better suited to the Burgundian varieties than sweltering Paso Robles. Probably the best producer here (other than John Alban, whose Rhône-style wines are magnificent but exceedingly expensive) is Talley.

For a decade or more, Brian Talley has produced some exquisite Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs that deserve to be better known.

Another fine source of Syrah lies further south in Santa Barbara. Properties such as Qupé, Zaca Mesa, and Beckmen regularly produce some of California’s finest Syrah, and Beckmen’s Grenache is delicious too. It is ironic that just as the Californians have really come to grips with Syrah, the market for these wines has faded.

The fad for Syrah about 10 years ago encouraged growers to plant too much and too fast, and not always in the best areas. It’s a variety that grows well just about everywhere in the state, with lovely examples from the Sierra Foothills (Easton is the top name here), Sonoma, Paso Robles, and Santa Barbara. Napa can grow powerful Syrah too, but some of the prices can make Cote Rôtie look cheap. But the acreage planted outgrew demand for the wine.

Pinot Noir has not suffered the same fate, and Santa Barbara is also proving to be an excellent source for this variety. Until recently much of it came from the Santa Maria Valley, where a good deal has been planted. Foxen and Jim Clendenen’s Au Bon Climat are probably the producers with the best track record from here. Clendenen also sourced Pinot Noir from a vineyard called Sanford & Benedict, which lies further south in a region called the Santa Rita Hills.

Santa Rita’s style war

Santa Rita now has its own appellation, and there has been a planting boom in
this valley. Like Santa Maria, this is a cool area with strong maritime influence, giving excellent growing conditions for Burgundian varieties.

At first vineyards such as Sanford & Benedict, which still exists, were planted on the valley floor, but today many hillside sites have been planted.

Here the soils are poor and the drainage excellent, but steady ocean breezes can slow down ripening. There is something of a style war being waged in Santa Rita. Some wineries, such as Sea Smoke, with almost 100 acres of Pinot planted on hillsides, make full-bodied Pinots of considerable weight and power.

A few years ago the wines were dark, extracted, and alcoholic, but recent vintages have been better balanced. Sea Smoke enjoys a cult following, and prices are high.

At the other extreme are properties such as Clos Pepe. Here the model, as at Au Bon Climat, is unashamedly Burgundian. Winemaker Wes Hagen goes to enormous pains to ensure his wines are, by Californian standards, low in alcohol (that is to say, under 14%).

The result is a range of Chardonnays and Pinots that are lean and refined, and, with some bottle age, delicious. The drawback is that these wines, lacking the usual Californian opulence, can seem austere and inexpressive for the first few years in bottle, whereas fuller-bodied and brasher Pinots have a more immediate appeal.

It comes down to a question of personal preference, but at least the consumer is now being offered a range of styles. It also confirms that California has far more to offer than overblown, over-oaked wines designed to impress wine writers more than drinkers.

A project to watch is a new organic vineyard in the coolest part of Santa Rita, planted to very high density on limestone soils. Dominique Lafon of Meursault is involved in his venture, which will test the limits within which Pinot Noir can be expected to ripen. The first wines were made this year.

Is all of this of more than academic interest to British importers, given that the growing market share that California wines have won over recent years is unfortunately confined mostly to cheap brands? In contrast, fine wines from California remain woefully under-represented. The main reason, of course, is price.

The strength of the US domestic market has allowed many prestigious producers to ignore export markets and sell the bulk of their production to restaurants or to private customers through winery mailing lists. But now the pressure is on: wines priced at $50 or more are failing to find customers, and discounting is becoming more frequent.

This may offer some opportunities for enterprising importers, although it is likely that even the more moderately priced of California’s best and most individual wines may still prove too expensive for European markets.

But it should no longer be assumed that the fine wines of California are a no-go area for the great majority of the British wine trade.

Stephen Brook, November 2009