Realization of a 10-Year Dream in Arrowood Vineyard’s First Vintage

Just down the road from a blanket of blue wildflowers in the Valley of the Moon, partially hidden by a bank of oak trees, sits a white New England farmhouse that holds a dream a decade old.

Dick Arrowood’s long-planned wine venture, eight miles south of the one that first gained him fame, will release its first wine in two weeks, and it is a striking example of personal commitment to a concept. It is a wine that will draw raves and will support the headlines.

Headlines are commonplace for Arrowood. In the 1970s, as California wine drew acclaim, and as the state’s wines began to be compared with the greatest from France, Arrowood stood at the forefront.

As wine maker at Chateau St. Jean, he made a range of Chardonnays from different Sonoma County regions that put his winery in Kenwood on the wine map. It was a property of focus for the variety and gave Arrowood and St. Jean more than their share of glory.

No Shrinking Violet

Chateau St. Jean developed a following for a broad, rich, powerful style of Chardonnay that was no shrinking violet in the flavor department. St. Jean’s Chardonnay was the most desired wine in the country.

I’ll never forget the day in 1979 when I popped into a shop to buy one of the latest Chateau St. Jean Chardonnays. I asked the merchant if he had it yet.

“Not yet,” he said. “It should be here soon; the truck is on the way. And the guy out there in the parking lot, in the Mercedes, gets first crack at it.” The merchant said the collector, sitting in his car reading the paper, wanted to assure himself of getting his.

Times change. On April 1, a Chardonnay called Arrowood will be released to market. No one will be waiting in a parking lot to get it because Arrowood himself has been low-key about seeking advance publicity. But this wine is sure to be one of the most desired of the year once word gets out.

Arrowood, 42, remains the wine maker at Chateau St. Jean. And his new winery, sitting just off Highway 12 north of the city of Sonoma in the verdant Sonoma Valley, is the culmination of a dream he has had for years.

In addition to being a potentially lucrative business, Arrowood Vineyards and Winery gives him the freedom to make his own wine without being handcuffed by national marketing considerations that required production of larger amounts of wine to the possible detriment of the wine.

“I wanted to do this a long time ago, but I didn’t want to do it half-baked,” he said. “I wanted to wait until I had the money to do things right. I could have made my own wine in an old barn, and a surgeon can operate with a cheap scalpel, but give him the right tools and you won’t see the incision. I wanted the scalpel.”

He said that throughout the years he has had numerous offers from wealthy people to start his own operation, but “I wanted it this way, with just three partners, me, Alis (his wife) and the bank.”

The first wine to be released from this two-wine operation is the 1986 Chardonnay. Some 4,900 cases were made. The second wine, a 1985 Cabernet Sauvignon, will be out in the fall. Four thousand cases of it were made. These are far cries from Chateau St. Jean, now part of a multinational conglomerate (Suntory) that produces 175,000 cases a year.

Arrowood Winery will never produce more than 15,000 cases a year, and it will make only the above two varieties, with the wines being a blend of grapes from selected vineyards Arrowood knows from his long working relationship with them throughout the years.

The Chardonnay will come from three major regions--Alexander Valley for tropical fruit flavors, Russian River Valley for spice and acidity, and Chalk Hill for a flinty quality. “You’ve heard of some of the ranches before,” he said. “Russ Green, Jimtown, Preston. . . .”

You may be wondering what style of wine Arrowood has adopted.

No Style Established Yet

“I have not established a style for Arrowood Winery yet,” he said candidly. “But it won’t be in the style of the late ‘70s, those big, heavy wines with a lot of extract and oak. I want to get back to the basics here.”

The first Arrowood Chardonnay is an absolute delight of delicacy and totally different from his St. Jean style. It has a delicate lemon/spice aroma with a hint of clove. The taste is fairly rich, but layered with fruit and complexity. A totally dry finish is very long- lasting, though not as rich as St. Jean’s wines.

Price for this first wine is $16. The 1985 Cabernet, which will be out later this year, will be $18. The first red wine, made from Alexander Valley grapes, offers an initial dill and anise spiciness with a fairly rich, complex taste that is leaner and more delicate than you might imagine a first wine would be.

Both wines will be available throughout California with some wine being shipped to major national markets, such as New York, Chicago, Boston, Florida, Dallas, Denver and Seattle.

Arrowood hired Allen Kezer, a former St. Jean assistant wine maker, to be his right hand man at the new operation, and he has an agreement with Suntory, owners of St. Jean, to market his wine.

The Arrowood winery itself is a modest structure, sitting well back from the road to conform to Sonoma County’s request that this be a low-key operation. There is no tasting room. Where a huge parking lot might have been, two donkeys, Bert and Ernie, graze.

“They are used for fire protection,” said Alis. “They graze on the wild grasses and keep it like a firebreak.”

From the broad porch that spans the length of the winery building, one looks up on Sonoma Mountain, where Jack London wrote many of his works. It’s a green swath dotted here and there with small vineyards. Just below the porch is another new vineyard, Arrowood’s own three-acre parcel that is planted to Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petite Verdot, three Bordeaux varieties that are hard to find.

A decade ago, when Arrowood was first making headlines for St. Jean, there were about 300 wineries in California, and Arrowood was the kid with the perm cut who was making those big Chardonnays over there in Sonoma and stealing the thunder from the Napa Valley.

Today there are more than 700 wineries in the state and competition for headlines is greater than ever. With the release on April 1 of the first Arrowood wine, a new page may be added to the ledger.