Beating the Odds in Barren Esparto With 270 Acres of Vineyards

A wine country area may be defined as any region that has two or more wineries. Esparto doesn’t qualify.

Out here among the dry-farmed wheat and sheep ranches of Yolo County, a little-known wine producer has arrogantly placed about 270 acres of vineyards. It’s the only winery in Esparto, a sea of barren land surrounded by more barren land. One of the directions to the winery calls for you to continue driving after the paved county road ends and turns into gravel.

R.H. Phillips Vineyard is producing some of the most stylish wines you can imagine in this wasteland area of Yolo County in spite of the odds and the naysayers, who have said it couldn’t be done here.

Defied the Rules

It is the product of a flat wheat market and the talents of Clark Smith, a sandy-haired wine maker who looks like a 36-year-old version of Opie Taylor. It is Smith, more than any other, who has defied the rules and has conquered this barren land.

Standing in the bed of his beat-up truck (140,000 miles in four years), Smith points out over the dry landscape toward the mountain that separates these Dunnigan Hills from the Napa Valley. Over the mountain, he said, the cost of one acre there would buy you 40 acres here.

“Our land cost is so low. That’s why we can make a fine wine and sell it for a very reasonable price,” he said.

But it takes some getting used to the fact that here, where palm trees dot the vineyards, fine wine is possible. This far east, 40 miles north of Sacramento, daytime temperatures are too high to permit fine wine grapes to grow, said the experts. They argued that with summer readings well above 100 degrees in summer, grapes gain sugar too rapidly and never develop mature flavors.

Mitigating against that, however, are very cool nights that slow down the grapes’ development and permit them to develop almost as slowly as they do in the cooler regions.

Tasting Phillips wines proves the point. They are not the typical hot-climate aromas or tastes one gets from so many of the wines emanating from the central San Joaquin Valley, the hottest grape-growing region in the state.

And all R.H. Phillips wines are priced well below what they would be if they were made at a more prestigious location.

Brothers John and Carl Giguiere own this vineyard, and they might never have replanted their wheat were it not for the fact that the world wheat market is no place to make a dollar. But operating a vineyard was a costly conversion, so a lot about R.H. Phillips is done on a budget.

“This isn’t a Jordan,” said Smith as we ducked under a steel catwalk and up the stairs of the bottling line facility. “We do things the way they should be done and as cheaply as possible.”

Take the bottling line. Instead of constructing a building to house it, Smith bought a large truck and installed the bottling equipment into it. Trucks that deliver empty bottles to the winery back up to a hole in the bottling line truck, at a 90 degree angle, and bottles are fed through the hole.

Cramped Quarters

The winery itself is tiny, with tanks and hoses and barrels all crammed together, yet Smith and assistant Ron McClendon produce more than 150,000 cases of wine a year, some of it purchased in the open market and then blended to make a wine of value.

The wine of which Smith is most proud is his estate-grown Semillon, a variety not regarded as one of California’s heavyweights, but it is a wine that Smith fashions into one of style and grace. The 1985 version ($9) offers the slight herbal notes of the variety with the richness of a Chardonnay and the austere finish of a great white Graves.

The word most often used to describe Semillon is fig-like, but Phillips’ Semillon has only a faint hint of that, with more melony scents pervading. And interestingly, the wine’s broad taste contrasts with its very crisp finish, making it a nice match for Cajun food, of all things, as well as rich seafood.

The best value in the Phillips line is the 1986 Chenin Blanc, a lightly melony/herbal wine with a sweetish mid-palate and dry finish. At $4 or less, it’s better than some of those bland, innocuous White Zinfandels on the market these days.

“But this IS White Zinfandel,” said Smith, squeezing the maximum out of his impish twinkle. Then he produced an application he has just submitted to the federal government seeking permission to market a wine called White Zinfandel, but with the parenthetical phrase “Dry Chenin Blanc” underneath.

Smith pointed out that two reference works show that in the 19th Century, the phrase White Zinfandel was widely used as a synonym for Chenin Blanc, but that the designation White Zinfandel on a label today doesn’t refer to a grape variety at all, but rather to a method of making the red Zinfandel grape into a white wine.

Smith acknowledges that he probably won’t win approval to use White Zinfandel as a synonym for Chenin Blanc on his label. But he’s also hoping to get approval for another wine (also with little likelihood of approval). He wants to make a red wine from Yolo grapes of Italian heritage and call it Yolo Barolo.

Humor, in fact, pervades this place. The best-selling wine in the Phillips line is a little project called Chateau St. Nicholas. The wine is mostly Chenin Blanc with a small amount of red grapes added for color and flavor. Guess whose picture is on the label. Guess when it sells. (Hint: The cork is branded with the words Ho, Ho, Ho! ) Right.

And on Dec. 25 every year, the Chateau St. Nicholas label is dropped and a new label is used on the remainder of the same wine: Poolside Blush. Of the 154,000 cases of wine that R.H. Phillips sold in 1987, 31,700 was sold as Chateau St. Nicholas; 4,200 was sold as Poolside Blush.

Another lovely wine is the 1986 Night Harvest Sauvignon Blanc ($4), with classic herbal and pear aromas and a soft, dry finish. And a superb value in Chardonnay is R.H. Phillips’ ‘86, which is appley and very crisp. At $6, it’s one of the finest values in a variety that is rising in price.

Low Overhead/Underfoot

Low-priced wines come from low overhead, which in this case is underfoot. At $600 per acre, this Yolo County land is about $23,000 less per acre than land in the premium growing regions of Napa and Sonoma. And Smith points out that land development costs are less expensive here, too.

“Including the cost of the land and the three years it takes to get a crop, it costs about $5,000 to establish an acre of vineyard land here and close to $50,000 to do the same in the Napa Valley,” he said.

With the demand for Chardonnay growing rapidly around the state, Phillips would plant more acreage on its 2,500-acre ranch, but the partners, the Giguieres and Smith, don’t have the funds to do so.

R.H. Phillips sold its first wine in 1984 and sold 4,000 cases that year. It sold 40,000 cases in 1985, and Smith projects 190,000 cases for 1988.

Not bad for a winery located where the grape growing textbooks say to avoid.

Wine of the Week: 1985 Wyndham Estate Hunter Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($6.50)--With the Australian dollar now worth less than 75 American cents, Australian wines are beginning to be seen as great values, and this one is a grand example. Wyndham is importing a complete line of wines all of which are good values, but this may be the best. A load of fruit and a cedary spice component and a velvety soft aftertaste make it taste like it should sell for a good bit more. More about Wyndham in an upcoming column.