Mendocino’s time to shine

NARROW roads twist and turn alongside streams and past apple orchards, redwoods tower over everything, and you have to keep a sharp eye out for deer and wild turkeys. In Mendocino County, vineyards do not yet dominate the landscape but decorate it, scattered here and there rather than being crammed one on top of another.

This is California wine’s northern frontier. Tasting rooms are uncrowded and friendly and, though mostly bare bones, the wines poured are often of astonishing quality. They are certainly of astonishing diversity. California’s best sparkling wines and brandies are made here and so are Zinfandels from 50-year-old vines.

Here, it seems, in a single day’s drive you can taste the entire European continent -- or at least the winemaking parts of it. Even neighboring wineries will grow drastically different grapes: It’s not uncommon to find Burgundian Pinot Noir grown right next door to Apulian Negro Amaro and Californian Zinfandel. Sometimes they’re even on the same property.

While California’s better-known wine regions have settled into comfortable regional characters -- Napa is Bordeaux, Sonoma is Burgundy, the Central Coast is southern Rhone -- Mendocino is a joyous anarchy.

That is especially true these days as the county, which until recently served mostly as a grape-growing colony of its southern neighbors, comes into its own. Where not so long ago the name Mendocino conjured up largely undistinguished wines from giant producers, today there’s a flowering of new, high-quality smaller wineries, such as Saracina, Eaglepoint Ranch, Harmonique and Lolonis. Even the big boys are making a comeback.

Growers are notably unfettered in their approach to grape selection. You can find almost every grape under the sun growing in Mendocino County, many of them in organic vineyards. Rather than focusing on two or three commercial varietals, it’s not uncommon for a Mendocino vintner to feature a dozen wines, both familiar and obscure.

Greg Graziano is an extreme example. A hustling, barrel-chested 52-year-old, Graziano makes Pinot Noir and Pinot (a red blending grape from Champagne) under his French-oriented label Domaine Saint Gregory. Enotria, a label devoted to grapes from Italy’s Piedmont, where his family originated, covers Nebbiolo, Barbera, Dolcetto, Moscato and Arneis. A line called Monte Volpe represents the rest of Italy, with Sangiovese, Montepulciano, Pinot Grigio, Tocai Friuliano and more.

And the label called simply “Graziano” is dedicated to what the third-generation Ukiah-area winegrower refers to as “traditional Mendocino wines” -- Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc.

“There’s enough Cabernet and Chardonnay in the world,” says Graziano, who can’t wait to show visitors the vineyard of Aglianico he’s just planted outside his house. “Who needs more?

“We’ve always been the Rodney Dangerfield of wine areas. Even Lake County gets more respect than we do. I think partly it’s a cultural thing. So many Italians, because of our history, you just kept things close to the cup. But as a result, we didn’t get the attention we deserved. Now maybe that’s changing.”

You might expect that a maker of so many different wines would be the master of none, but that is not the case. Almost everything Graziano makes is good, and a lot of it, particularly the white wines, is excellent.

Graziano has a knack for balancing mouth-filling fruit and firm structure. His Chenin Blanc is startling; most California Chenins are soft and inoffensive, at best. Graziano’s has the minerality and grip of a dry Vouvray. It’s like sucking on pebbles from a mountain stream.

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For white-wine lovers

IN fact, Mendocino in general is a white-wine lover’s paradise, especially if you favor styles that emphasize fragrance, fruit and crispness over oak and alcohol. Mendocino could well become the home base of the growing Anything-but-Chardonnay club.

In large part, you can credit Mendocino’s magical summer weather for this. Days here are hot, commonly into the 90s. But at night, things cool down dramatically. Often, there’s a 30-degree swing from day to night and sometimes the difference is as much as 50 degrees.

That temperature shift allows grapes to ripen completely but still maintain a high level of acidity, a combination that results in wines with mouth-filling fruit but bracing, palate-cleansing tartness. It is unusual to find a Mendocino wine that tastes fat and flabby.

That is true whether you are tasting a cherry bright Pinot Noir, a rose-scented Gewurztraminer or a figgy, herbal Sauvignon Blanc. It sometimes seems that there’s little this county can’t do in terms of wine.

That’s especially so with white varietals, of which more than a dozen are grown here, including not only Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, but also Pinot Grigio (or Pinot Gris, depending on the winemaker’s whim), Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Viognier, Semillon, Pinot Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Muscat, Marsanne, Roussanne and Tocai Friuliano.

Though Mendocino County is bigger than the states of Rhode Island or Delaware, much of it is extremely mountainous, and grapes are grown mostly in only two relatively small areas.

The historic home of Mendocino wine was the upper Russian River, on the east side of Highway 101, around the town of Ukiah. Then, in the 1970s, a few adventurous growers started planting vines on the other side of the coast range west of Ukiah, in the Anderson Valley along Highway 128 as it winds its way to the coast.

The interior area, which includes Redwood, McDowell and Potter valleys, has been home to grape growers for more than a century. Indeed, tucked away in the McDowell Valley is a vineyard of head-pruned Grenache and Syrah vines, as thick and gnarly as apple trees, that was planted in the 1890s.

Most of these older vineyards were established by Italian immigrants such as the families of Graziano and Charlie Barra, who owns Barra of Mendocino winery. The grand old man of Mendocino wine, the 79-year-old Barra this year is supervising his 61st harvest in the county.

“I started working grapes when I was 10 years old and had my first harvest when I was 18,” he says. “When I graduated from grammar school my dad gave me a pair of pruning shears. I’ve never missed a harvest.”

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Growing grapes for all

DURING Prohibition, growers shipped grapes such as Carignane and Alicante Bouschet back East for home winemakers. Or, like Graziano’s grandfather, they made wine quietly on their own, hidden in Mendocino’s many hills.

After repeal, most of the growers sold their grapes. Most of them went to wineries in other areas; even today, 75% of Mendocino’s grapes are crushed outside the county. The rest went to the county’s two big winemakers -- first to Parducci Wine Cellars, founded in 1931, and later Fetzer Vineyards, founded in 1968. Both grew huge under family ownerships: Fetzer topped the 2-million-case mark in the early 1990s.

As a result, Mendocino was slow to develop the kinds of high-profile operations that started in Napa and Sonoma. When you’re getting good prices selling grapes, why go to the expense of starting a winery?

But both big wineries were sold -- Parducci in 1972 and Fetzer in 1992 -- and the businesses suffered. The ensuing cutbacks resulted in local growers being stuck with grapes but no buyers.

This spurred some grape growers like Barra to start their own wineries. “What winemaking does for a grape grower is take a perishable commodity and make it nonperishable,” says Barra.

But Mendocino’s dark days seem to be safely behind it. The county is seeing a boom of new small wineries. There are 11 tasting rooms in the Hopland area, and there are more than 20 west of town in the Anderson Valley.

Not only that, both Parducci and Fetzer are again on the upswing.

Though Fetzer wines are now made mostly from outside grapes, the company’s organic label Bonterra, sourced almost entirely from Mendocino vineyards, has rocketed to 170,000 cases in sales, with the 200,000 mark on the horizon.

Parducci was bought in 2004 by the Mendocino Wine Co., and is also transitioning to organic and biodynamic vineyards. One partner is Paul Dolan, the former president of Fetzer who helped implement its organic program.

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Organic success

PARTLY because of Dolan’s leadership, partly because of Mendocino’s famously back-to-the-Earth nature, organic grape growing thrives here. Bonterra winemaker Bob Blue estimates that almost one-third of the vineyards in the county are organic.

“Mendocino is way beyond every other appellation,” he says. “We started small, but it’s really turning into something.”

Indeed, the Fetzer family itself is back in the wine business, and in a big way. Since an eight-year noncompete restriction in their sales contract ended in 2001, four family members have started their own independent wineries in Mendocino.

The largest is owned by John Fetzer, who had taken over running the family business in 1981 after his father died. His new winery, Saracina, is probably the closest thing to a Napa-style landmark that Mendocino has. Tucked back against the hills just southwest of Ukiah, it features more than 8,000 feet of caves drilled back into the mountain -- remarkably spacious for a facility whose owner insists it will never produce more than 12,000 cases.

Fetzer clearly is shooting for the stars with the project, signing famed winemaker David Ramey as a consultant. The winery, which had its first release in 2001, focuses on Rhone varietals, Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel.

“We decided on these grapes because I was talking to David and he told me we’d both be old men before we made a mark in Cabernet or Chardonnay from this county,” says Fetzer. “So the first wine we released was a Sauvignon Blanc and now we’re proud to have it on the wine list at the French Laundry.”

That Sauvignon Blanc is remarkably complex. Normally a simple, toss-off grape, in the hands of Ramey and winemaker Alex MacGregor, it shows fragrant pink grapefruit in the nose and a mouth-filling flavor of citrus and quince.

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Anderson Valley start

UNTIL Saracina got going, most of the high-profile buzz in Mendocino had been coming from the Anderson Valley. Populated by just a few hardy wine pioneers until well into the 1980s, it has gained luster with the addition of Roederer Estate, which released its first sparkling wine in 1988, and Goldeneye, the Pinot Noir project by Napa Valley’s Dan and Margaret Duckhorn, which had its first release in 2000.

The oldest winery under the same management in the Anderson Valley, and still one of the best and most popular, is Navarro Vineyards, which was started by Ted Bennett and his wife Deborah Cahn in 1973. Their innovations helped shape the character of the Mendocino County wine business.

Both the popularity of Alsatian grape varietals such as Gewurztraminer, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris and Riesling, and the trend toward small wineries favoring direct sales over retail distributors can be traced to Navarro.

And both of them came about almost by accident.

Bennett and Cahn, a Berkeley couple who had sold their interest in a stereo chain to get back to the land, based their winery around Gewurztraminer because it was their favorite wine.

And they happened upon their unusual sales strategy because they had trouble finding stores that would carry their wines.

“That’s the reason for the tasting room,” Bennett says, “so we can show people these weird wines we have and let them taste them. Then we can make the sale.”

Navarro’s “Old Vines” Chenin Blanc is every bit as remarkable as Graziano’s but from a different point of view. It is a big, rich wine, full of tropical fruit and pear flavors. It is also a remarkable value, with a suggested list of $11. Not surprisingly, it is also remarkably scarce as the winery nearly always sells out almost as soon as it is released.

Because of the acidity, these are wines that can go the distance too. A 1983 “Cluster Select” sweet Riesling tasted after dinner was the color of ice tea but surprisingly alive in the mouth, the fresh fruit flavors having transformed into flowers and nuts.

Today, Navarro makes about 45,000 cases of wine, about a quarter of which is sold through restaurants such as Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Of the remaining sales, about 85% come from the tasting room, wine club or phone or Internet orders directly to the winery.

Those are numbers that make winery accountants’ mouths water, because the winery gets 100% of the money on direct sales rather than sharing it with distributors and retailers.

Despite charging modest prices for their wines -- the most expensive current release, the 1998 Pinot Noir “Methode a l’Ancienne,” is only $29 -- Navarro is happily profitable. So much so that almost all employees, including vineyard workers, are full time and all have health insurance.

“It’s all just so Berkeley,” says Bennett. “The reason we’ve been successful is because we didn’t know anything about the wine business. I’m absolutely convinced of that.”

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Cultivating enthusiasm

THAT may be so, but many small wineries in the area are now working to develop their own wine “clubs”; meanwhile, offbeat varietals such as Gewurztraminer are so popular that Mendocino County is now host to an International Alsace Varietal Festival every February.

Probably more important in the long run, the county wine growers have banded to form a Mendocino Winegrape & Wine Commission to promote their products -- the first in the state to represent both grape growers and vintners.

By assessing a $10 fee for every ton of grapes sold or processed in the county, the commission is expected to have a $500,000 war chest to begin advertising next year.

With that kind of push, Mendocino won’t stay a secret much longer. Though the county’s frontier winemaking ways are probably here for good, at least it seems maybe more people will have the chance to enjoy them.

“In a way, we’re really lucky,” says Greg Nelson, a second-generation Mendocino grape grower who started his own Nelson Family Vineyards in 2003.

“People just couldn’t get enough Napa Cabernet, so why should they grow anything else? But we didn’t have that in Mendocino, so we’ve always been looking for something new that might catch on.”

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russ.parsons@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Wine touring

Tasting rooms

In California’s Anderson Valley, the best tasting rooms are at Navarro Vineyards and Handley Cellars. Roederer Estate and Goldeneye Estate Winery are also nice but charge a nominal fee for tasting. The Husch Vineyard tasting room is a nostalgic throwback to old California wine country -- basically a shed where they pour some astonishing wines.

In the Ukiah area, downtown Hopland (about 10 minutes south of Ukiah) seems to be converting to one big tasting room. Stop at Graziano Family of Wines and then meander through town.

For maps, directions and information, visit the excellent websites by the Mendocino Winegrowers Alliance (www.mendowine.com) and the Mendocino County Alliance (www.gomendo.com).

Places to stay

Because the two main growing areas are so distant -- it takes 45 minutes of winding mountain roads to get from one to the other -- you’re better off staying locally.

In the Anderson Valley, the Boonville Hotel (14040 Highway 128, Boonville, [707] 895-2210; www.boonvillehotel.com) is run by the Bates-Schmitt family, which owns the Apple Farm in Philo. This is a historic hotel that has been cleaned up and modernized. But there are no phones in the rooms and neither are there air conditioners -- something to ponder seriously when the weather is warm. The restaurant, which is open Thursday though Monday, is very good. Rooms are $125 to $225. The Anderson Creek Inn (12050 Anderson Valley Way, Boonville, [707] 895-3091; www.andersoncreekinn.com) is not as polished but is a good alternative, with rooms from $130 to $190.

In the Ukiah area, Vichy Springs (2605 Vichy Springs Road, Ukiah, [707] 462-9515; www.vichysprings.com), a 150-year-old hot springs resort, is the nicest place to stay, with rooms from $120 to $245. There is also a Hampton Inn (1160 Airport Park Blvd., Ukiah, [707] 462-6555) and a Fairfield Inn (1140 Airport Park Blvd., Ukiah, [707] 463-3600).

Places to eat

In the Anderson Valley, Boonville Hotel chef Johnny Schmitt -- whose mom and dad founded the French Laundry -- can really cook. Prices are moderate; the Thursday night three-course prix-fixe menu is $28. There is also a good selection of local wines. Lauren’s Cafe (14211 Highway 128, Boonville, [707] 895-3869) is more relaxed and eclectic.

In Ukiah, Patrona (130 W. Standley, Ukiah, [707] 462-9181), a bistro and wine bar, is the restaurant of the moment. Entree dishes such as pan-roasted halibut with cherry tomato gratin run $15 to $20. There is a good local wine list. The city has surprisingly good Asian food as well. Try Oco Time (111 W. Church St., Ukiah, [707] 462-2422), a Japanese restaurant specializing in okonomiyaki (noodle pancakes) or Ruen Tong Thai Cuisine (801 N. State St., Ukiah, [707] 462-0238).

-- Russ Parsons

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From a white-wine lover’s paradise

MENDOCINO County’s white wines are among the most distinctive made in California. Here are some of the best among the current releases. Because most of these wines are made in limited quantities, buying direct from the winery is often the best way to find them.

Chenin Blanc

2005 Graziano Bone-dry, stony, with a terrific acidic finish. $14 at www.grazianofamilyofwines.com; (707) 744-8466.

Gewurztraminer

2005 Handley Cellars “Anderson Valley” Exotic nose of spice along with rose and orange blossoms. Velvety texture with a firm acid backbone. $17 at www.handleycellars.com; (800) 733-3151, (707) 895-3876.

2005 Husch Vineyards Lovely nose of rosewater and citrus. Rich flavors balanced by acidity. $14 at www.huschvineyards.com; (800) 554-8724.

2004 Lazy Creek Vineyards Made from 40- to 50-year-old vines. Exotic nose beginning to show a little mature petrol character. Rich texture balanced by firm acidity. $22.50 from Lazy Creek Vineyards, (707) 895-3623.

2005 Navarro Vineyards Heady with the scent of rose geraniums and peaches. Great texture, balanced with acidity and a slight bitterness at the finish. $18, for release Nov. 1 at www.navarrowine.com; (800) 537-9463, (707) 895-3686.

Pinot Blanc

2005 Lazy Creek Vineyards “Hein Vineyard” Nose is almost Riesling-like, and flavors lean toward melons and peaches with a hint of almond at the finish. Juicy, mouth-filling texture. $39.50 from Lazy Creek Vineyards, (707) 895-3623.

2004 Barra of Mendocino Pinot Blanc Made from 50-year-old vines, this wine’s style emphasizes citrus and spice, with hints of slate in the finish. $15.50 at www.barraofmendocino.com; (707) 485-0322.

Pinot Gris

2005 McFadden Vineyard Pinot Gris A great food wine, herbal and citrus flavors with a strong acid structure. $13.50 from (800) 544-8230; no website.

2005 Monte Volpe Pinot Grigio Terrific food wine. Burry, figgy flavors with a hint of almond in the finish. $14 at www.grazianofamilyofwines.com; (707) 744-8466.

2005 Handley Cellars Pinot Gris “Anderson Valley” Subtle, flowery nose. Rich texture with spicy, figgy fruit and firm acidity. $17 at www.handleycellars.com; (800) 733-3151.

2005 Nelson Family Vineyards Pinot Grigio “Estate” Velvety texture balanced with clean acidity. Extracted flavors of figs and stones. $15 at www.nelsonfamilyvineyards.com; (707) 462-3755.

Riesling

2004 Navarro Vineyards White Riesling Steely Alsatian-style Riesling with hints of flowers and cloves in the nose. $16 at www.navarrowine.com; (800) 537-9463, (707) 895-3686.

2005 Nelson Family Vineyards Stony Alsatian nose with hints of spice and flowers. Slightly sweet, with tastes of apricots and peaches and slate. $14 at www.nelsonfamilyvineyards.com; (707) 462-3755.

Sauvignon Blanc

2005 Graziano Crisp, citrusy with hints of lemon and melon. $14 at www.grazianofamilyofwines.com; (707) 744-8466.

2003 Jepson Mature nose with fruit yielding to grass and herbs. Strong acidity with nice, long finish. $11.50 at www.jepsonwine.com; (800) 516-7342.

2004 Handley Cellars “Ferrington Vineyard” Rich texture with figs and spice in nose and long, citrus finish. $14 at www.handleycellars.com; (800) 733-3151.

2005 Navarro Vineyards “Cuvee 128” Green, sappy, figgy and mouth-filling. $16, for release in November at www.navarrowine.com. (800) 537-9463, (707) 895-3686.

2005 Saracina Vineyards Lovely grapefruit nose, complex flavors with completely integrated melons and figs and lingering acidity. $24 at www.saracina.com; (707) 744-1671.

Viognier

2004 Bonterra Ripe, rich nose with peach blossoms and tropical fruit. Thanks to firm acids, the wine never gets unctuous or syrupy. $14 at www.bevmo.com. (925) 730-5247.

2003 Jepson Rich, exotic tropical fruit nose balanced by good acidity. Not at all syrupy or oily. $16 at www.jepsonwine.com; (800) 516-7342.

-- Russ Parsons