Successful Napa Wine Maker Finds New Challenges Along Central Coast

When a kid fresh out of college treks to a media center such as Los Angeles or New York seeking to break into television, the advice is always predictable: Go to the boonies and work for a 6-watt station to get some experience, then come back here.

At first glance, seeing Chuck Ortman working in Paso Robles seems incongruous. Ortman has been in the wine business 21 years; he was a successful and respected wine maker in the Napa Valley--the vinous equivalent of New York or Los Angeles.

Eighteen months ago he moved to Paso Robles, in San Luis Obispo County, which is rarely compared with the Napa Valley. Why would Ortman, who just turned 50, make such a move?

“I caught the dream,” he said the other day. “I know it sounds trite, but it’s a new challenge. I feel like a kid again.”

The project that Ortman heads down here, 300-some-odd miles south of the Napa Valley, is called Meridian, a winery that within a year or two will, I expect, become the next superstar winery in the state. But unlike the other superstar wineries that offer you glitz and charge you plenty for it, Meridian offers excellent wine at a very moderate price.

The first Ortman wine under a new label is being shipped to market this week. It is a 1988 Meridian Chardonnay with a designation of Santa Barbara County. It sports a label featuring a painting by Chicago artist Thomas Gaithman, and it’s one of the best Central Coast wines I have tasted, a wonderfully balanced effort that has faint notes of vanilla and cream inside a more delicate citrus and tropical fruit aroma and a fresh, soft, appealing finish.

Based on its quality, this wine should sell for $13. Maybe more, given the rambunctious pricing policies of wine makers these days. The ’88 Meridian Chardonnay is $9. And with the industrywide discounts that are typically available, it could be seen for less than $8 in some places.

One reason it is being sold for so little, compared with its quality, is that the Meridian project is the third major one of Wine World Inc., the U.S. division of Nestle S.A. of Switzerland. Wine World is the parent company of Beringer Vineyards, and today Beringer is the most energetic wine company in the United States.

In the last three years alone, Beringer has spent an estimated $85 million for wine and vineyard property around the state, and president Mike Moone has said the firm doesn’t expect to make its money back overnight.

There is another, subtler reason Meridian wines won’t be high-priced. Moone can’t afford to see a wine from California’s Central Coast selling for more than his Napa Valley wines from Beringer, and since Beringer’s regular Napa Valley Chardonnay sells for about $10, Meridian must be less.

Another ’88 Meridian Chardonnay worth looking for is designated Edna Valley ($12.50), a broader, richer wine with marvelous structure.

Nestle got into the wine business two decades ago when it bought a deteriorating Napa Valley property, Beringer Brothers. Under the brilliant wine-making stewardship of the late Myron Nightingale, Beringer became a gemstone.

About five years ago, Beringer envisioned a boon in fine wine, and the company began to invest heavily in other wine regions. One of the first new acquisitions came in 1986 when Beringer bought Souverain in Sonoma County for $10 million, changing its name to Chateau Souverain. Then Beringer bought the old Italian Swiss Colony Winery in Asti at the northern end of the county for $6 million.

Next came the purchase of 2,875 acres of some of the best vineyard land in the Central Coast--three parcels in the Santa Barbara County area. Those deals cumulatively figure to have cost Beringer another $55 million.

In June, 1988, Beringer bought Estrella River Winery, 90 miles north of its vineyards in Santa Barbara County, to use as a wine-making facility. The winery cost $13 million. And to establish a new image for the winery, Beringer bought the Meridian name from Ortman, who had developed it with a line of wines, and Ortman accepted the post of full-time wine maker.

Now add in vineyard development costs (estimated at $20 million statewide), construction costs at Beringer, Chateau Souverain and Meridian (estimate: $50 million), and you get the picture: a company on the move. It now owns more than 5,000 acres of vineyard land, has contracts for thousands of additional acres of top-quality fruit, and markets wine under five different brands (including Napa Ridge and Los Hermanos).

Ortman couldn’t pass up the chance to be a part of this freight train, and it was a symbiotic relationship. Ortman brings to Meridian a rock-solid reputation as a brilliant Chardonnay craftsman with a wealth of experience dealing with a multitude of different Chardonnay characteristics because he has worked with so many Chardonnay producers.

Here he works with three vineyards that, taken as a whole, would make 750,000 cases of wine. There are only 25,000 cases of the first Meridian Chardonnay; the rest of the grapes go to Beringer for Napa Ridge, Los Hermanos and any other needs the company has.

The largest vineyard, 2,196 acres, is called White Hills (formerly called Rancho San Antonio). The Chardonnay here gives off a fascinating perfume, an aroma not unlike kiwi fruit. There are 1,000 acres of Chardonnay planted here.

The 371-acre Cat Canyon Vineyard, formerly called Los Olivos, is loaded with limestone. Chardonnay from here (off 300 acres) produces wine with a Chablis, lemon, limestoney, earth and spice character.

At the warmer, 308-acre Riverbench Vineyard, in Foxen Canyon, the 220 acres of Chardonnay produce a pineapply fruit character and give the wine body and fullness.

Ortman noted that if a new wine maker without broad wine-making skill had been given these three vineyards to deal with, some of the scents might have been confusing. But he said that with his background with a wide variety of styles of Chardonnay fruit, he was perfectly suited for this job.

“When I see a characteristic in a wine, I can say, ‘Oh, yeah, this reminds me of the fruit I had at Shafer in ‘84,’ or ‘This is like the stuff I worked with at St. Clement.’ So I know how to deal with the different elements.”

Chuck Ortman began in the wine business in 1968 as a “cellar rat” for one of the industry’s pioneers, Joe Heitz at Heitz Cellars. Ortman never had any formal training as a wine maker; Heitz taught him. In 1971 Ortman was hired as wine maker at Spring Mountain Vineyards and stayed there through 1979, then struck out on his own as a consultant.

By then he had developed a sense of proportion about Chardonnay that can be confusing on first sip. For about two years, I didn’t know what to make of Ortman Chardonnays, and only later did I get the idea, which is that the wine will be a trace lean and austere when it’s released, but with time in bottle, the wine takes on a glow you rarely get from bigger, richer, more top-heavy wines.

Some of Ortman’s clients over the years have changed style, but many have kept their Chardonnays close to his ideal. Among them are Monticello, Fisher (he still consults with wine maker Max Gasiewicz), Far Niente, Shafer, Keenan, Cain, St. Clement, St. Andrews, Chateau Bouchaine, Perret, Colby, Smothers, Tudal, and Staton Hills in Washington.

After producing wine under a Charles Ortman label in 1979, Chuck developed Meridian in 1984, producing only Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.

At Meridian, Ortman will also make Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Pinot Noir. He is also experimenting with a number of other varieties growing in the nearly 3,000 acres of vines under his control and managed by Bob Steinhauer, one of the industry’s top viticulturalists. I have tasted a few of these wines (most will not be released for another year), and they are actually more exciting than the Chardonnay.

“The funny thing is that I had never made Syrah before, but I make one now and I’m more excited than I’ve been in years.” (The Syrah is a sensational wine; it’ll be released in about a year.)

Tom Peterson is another beneficiary of Beringer’s commitment to quality, but instead of working with thousands of acres of vineyard land owned by the company, he gets to choose which privately owned vineyards he wants to get fruit from. And then Beringer pays top dollar to get it.

In the last two years, stories have abounded about Beringer (Chateau Souverain in this case) having signed a deal to get the grapes off another top vineyard.

Slowly, using new equipment and new aging barrels, Peterson’s program is reversing itself to one of quality. And again the prices are reasonable.

I sampled the lovely 1988 Chardonnay ($9) from Chateau Souverain the other day and found lovely, subtle tropical fruit and a soft, appealing aftertaste. The 1988 Reserve (not yet priced) is a richer wine, but with more finesse, with lemony elements.

Also exciting was the 1988 Sauvignon Blanc ($7), with a classic melon characteristic and none of the overt grassiness that some people find bothersome.

Better still, however, were the new red wines, notably the 1987 Zinfandel ($9), a spicy, blackberryish wine, and the 1986 and 1987 Cabernets ($9), both of which have a kind of Bordeaux-like elegance, though the former had more of the black cherry and chocolate spice scents.

Peterson soon will have out 1988 Zinfandels from old Geyserville vines, adjacent to the winery located in the northern end of Sonoma County; a Chardonnay emphasizing the spice of the Carneros, at the southern end of the county; and other wines from other carefully selected blocks of vineyards.

Both Peterson and Ortman love to talk about the construction going on at their properties. Neither talks in specifics about how much Moone is spending on these projects, but both simply nod when $10 million is mentioned.

At Meridian, located five miles east of 101 at Paso Robles, a new wing to the building will house the new barrels. (Estrella River, short of cash for a decade, had not added much new oak to its winery over the years, and none of it the expensive French oak.) An archway will greet visitors to a large, airy tasting room.

(The Estrella River name, by the way, was retained by Cliff Giacobine, and those wines will be produced at another facility.)

Peterson’s facility will have a tree-lined driveway leading up to a newly redesigned Chateau Souverain with a new roof, new siding, landscaped walkways, and a new tasting room. The winery now boasts one of the best restaurants north of San Francisco, featuring the brilliant creations of chef Gary Danko.