Old Angle on Making Wines : Vintners Still Turn Mountains Into Merlot Hills

One of the oldest axioms of wine making declares that “Bacchus loves the hillsides,” meaning that the best wines are grown in mountainous areas. This has long been evidenced by the terraced hills along the Rhine and Moselle in Germany, the Rhone in France, the Douro in Portugal--and by the Mayacamas Mountains in Northern California. There more than a century ago, vintners planted the hillsides to start our wine industry; and if they want the ultimate in wines today, they still take to the hills.

Spring Mountain may be better known for its make-believe role as the winery in television’s “Falcon Crest,” but it is also home to several young vineyards--among them Cain Cellars and the Robert Keenan winery. Jerry and Joyce Cain, who have planted 100 acres of predominantly Bordeaux varieties, established their vineyard in 1982; until then, the land had been a cattle and sheep ranch for almost 150 years. Jerry Cain is a former engineer; Joyce was an architectural designer.

The Cains’ wine maker--Lester Hardy, formerly at Roudon-Smith, Conn Creek and Chappellet--is very optimistic about their first estate-grown 1984 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, from third-leaf vines. It’s not yet released, but I tasted it and found a deep complexity of flavors from that mountain soil--a marriage of cherries, chocolate and anise. Cain Cellars’ first released wines (from lease-purchase grapes) include a 1985 Carneros Chardonnay ($14), a 1983 Napa Valley Merlot ($12), and a 1983 Napa Valley Malbec ($14) with a taste that almost suggests cloves.

In contrast to the Cains, San Francisco-born insurance executive Robert Keenan and his wife, Ann, established their classic, contemporary-California winery as a retirement project on the remnants of a vineyard, the 100-year-old Conradi winery, which had reverted to forest. Since he started out in 1974, Keenan has amassed a number of medals for his quality wines. Noteworthy among those are the 1984 Chardonnay ($12.50), which well deserved its gold medal for mellow richness and style, and the 1985 Napa Valley Chardonnay ($11), which is wholly barrel-fermented and offers an illusion of sweetness but is completely dry.