Local Wines Nothing to Sniff At
For a world-class winery, Adam Tolmach’s Ojai Vineyard is missing some key ingredients.
Like other wineries that have blossomed up and down the state, his Ojai Valley operation enjoys a picture-book setting, tucked beneath a canopy of gnarled oaks on a hillside circled by turkey vultures and visited by an occasional bobcat or mountain lion.
But the similarities end there. Tolmach offers no tours and has no tasting room. He has no sales office, relying mostly on word-of-mouth to sell the scant 5,000 cases he produces each year.
Oh, and he has no grapes.
The winemaker’s longtime dream of growing grapes in his own vineyard died in 1995 when disease crippled his vines.
But none of that has stopped Tolmach, who continues to produce award-winning wines. His 1994 Santa Barbara County Reserve Syrah earned a stellar 93 points from world-renowned wine critic Robert Parker, firmly ranking Tolmach among California’s finest winemakers.
“We are really happy with the size we are at right now; it’s a craft at this scale, not an industrial process,” said Tolmach, a wiry man with a wild head of salt-and-pepper hair and a beard to match. “I’m not really interested in growing in size or quantity. Our goal is to make better and better wines each year.”
Tolmach is part of the small, obscure fraternity of Ventura County winemakers who are thriving in a region that grows virtually no grapes--proof that you don’t need a vineyard to a be a vintner.
Setting up in strip malls and industrial parks from Camarillo to Ventura, local vintners have carved a niche in California’s wine industry, squeezing out superior vintages in a county better known for its lemons and strawberries than its syrahs and sauvignon blancs.
Theirs is a small and diverse agriculture, with room for everyone from celebrity vintners to mom-and-pop operations.
“I think it’s kind of a bunch of individualists. I think we all try hard and every now and then kind of shine in different areas,” said Ed Pagor, whose one-man operation, Rolling Hills Vineyards, produces about 1,800 cases a year from a Camarillo industrial park. By comparison, a large winemaker such as E&J; Gallo makes 65 million to 70 million cases a year.
It’s unlikely, however, that Ventura County will follow in the footsteps of such winemaking meccas as Napa or Sonoma, or even such upstarts as neighboring Santa Barbara County, which has expanded to more than 15,000 acres of vineyards and nearly 50 wineries over the past quarter century.
Area Is Inhospitable for Growing Grapes
By contrast, Ventura County has about half a dozen wineries and only three of those are regularly open to the public--Old Creek Ranch Winery in Oak View, Leeward Winery in Ventura and Giessinger Winery in Fillmore.
Moreover, agriculture officials say the county is climatically and commercially inhospitable for grape growing, with local conditions better suited to producing more profitable fruits and vegetables.
In fact, Ventura County has a mere 31 acres of vineyards, barely a blip on the screen compared with the more famous grape-growing regions.
“We’re not in the same mode as San Luis Obispo County or Santa Barbara County,” said David Buettner, the county’s chief deputy agricultural commissioner. “Our property down here is a little too expensive, we just don’t have the opportunities for expansion.”
Don’t tell that to Edouard Giessinger. A newcomer to the local wine scene, the UCLA laser physics professor launched his winery in 1997 in a 5,000-square-foot building behind Fillmore City Hall.
Giessinger, who comes from a family of winemakers, had been looking to set up his own winery when he stumbled upon the farm town a few years ago.
Between Fillmore and another facility in Amador County, he produces about 20,000 cases annually. Most recently he opened a tasting room on State Street in Santa Barbara and has partnered with the Fillmore & Western Railway Co. to offer monthly wine-tasting excursions on a turn-of-the-century train that travels from Fillmore to Santa Paula.
Giessinger won’t listen to any talk about the limitations of the local industry, convinced that he and the other vintners can create a wine corridor both rich in character and robust in profits.
“What does Santa Barbara County have what Ventura County doesn’t have?” he asked. “There’s definitely a lot of interest in this kind of business, because it brings in people who spend money. I think it’s just a matter of time before it takes off.”
Some winemakers, however, are content to keep things the way they are--small and obscure.
Tucked away in a tin-sided warehouse on Ventura’s blue-collar west end, the up-and-coming Sine Qua Non winery produces a precious 1,500 cases a year. A passerby would hardly suspect a winery could exist in the midst of this hardscrabble neighborhood of razor wire and equipment yards, especially one of such reputation.
Winemaker Manfred Krankl started making wine about 10 years ago to supplement the wine list at the famed Campanile restaurant in Los Angeles, where he is managing partner. He planned to produce only one vintage, but as he learned the craft his interest grew.
Then, three years ago, his life changed. Krankl sent a sample of his 1994 syrah to wine critic Parker, founder and editor of Wine Advocate, the industry’s most influential publication. Parker rewarded the winery with a rating of 95.
That catapulted the boutique winery into the company of some of France’s best labels. Afterward, Krankl was flooded with more orders than he could fill.
Even today, more than a thousand people are on a list, waiting for a chance to buy his wine. But he has no desire to boost production or open his doors to the public, saying he enjoys the solitude that comes with his newfound craft.
“I’ve run several businesses now, but I’ve never been involved in anything that strikes people so personally,” Krankl said. “It just goes to show you that you don’t need fancy showplaces or marble floors to make great wine.”
Ventura winemakers Chuck Gardner and Chuck Brigham will drink to that. They began making wine as a hobby 20 years ago, hoping to have something to keep them busy when they reached retirement age.
“I guess it just got out of hand,” said Gardner at his Leeward Winery, tucked into a strip mall in east Ventura.
From this garage-like setting, Gardner and Brigham put out as many as 10,000 cases a year. And unlike Krankl and Tolmach, the pair readily embrace the public.
Leeward’s tasting room is open seven days a week. And Gardner and Brigham happily offer tours.
In the lobby is a map pinpointing different areas in the state where they get their grapes. Leeward trucks in grapes in September, October and November. They are loaded into a press in a different warehouse at the property and gently squeezed into juice before being funneled into oak barrels, which are stacked floor to ceiling.
In a tasting room flanked by nearly 300 prize ribbons bestowed upon the wines over the years, Brigham poured samples of 1997 vintages for a New York couple visiting their daughter.
The two men believe a winery should be personal and accessible and never grow into the kind of place where people have to make an appointment just to stop by.
“We’ve seen a lot of people start where we are and most of them are not in business anymore or have gotten so large that they’ve lost what they were trying to do,” Brigham said. “Who wants to make an appointment? This is not seeing a lawyer or having your teeth pulled. It’s supposed to be fun.”
Winemaking is also supposed to involve grapes. Few of the local winemakers grow their own, relying instead on vineyards from as far away as Oregon to make their cabernets and chardonnays.
Leeward recently planted a small vineyard--five vines--in a parking lot median in front of the winery, as a way to tap the romantic notions evoked by the harvest. Unfortunately, the winery had to plant table grapes because a parking lot median is inhospitable to premium wine grapes.
In Ojai, Leonard and Beth Jenkins have embarked on a more serious grape-growing venture. At the suggestion of friends who grow grapes in Paso Robles, they planted eight acres of syrah grapes last year on their Ojai property.
Eventually, the Jenkins expect their vineyard--about 6,500 plants staked in military precision--to yield about 2 tons of grapes an acre. Even though the first marketable harvest is still a couple of years away, they already have been approached by major winemakers interested in purchasing the crop.
“I think there’s a real demand for these plants,” said Leonard Jenkins, a firefighter with the Ventura County Fire Department. “Amazingly, it has become quite a passion for us. I don’t know how to really describe the romantic effects these grapes have on you. You get pretty attached to them.”
Adam Tolmach felt the same way about his vineyard. The UC Davis-trained viticulturist and founding member of the celebrated Au Bon Climat winery in Santa Barbara County planted his own vineyard in 1981. He planted 3,500 vines on 5.5 acres of the family’s hillside ranch producing syrah, semillion and sauvignon blanc grapes. For years the vineyard produced the bulk of the fruit for his wines.
Disease Dashed Winemaker’s Dream
But the plantings fell victim to Pierce’s disease, a bacteria carried by insects known as leafhoppers. Infected plants slowly die off, unable to absorb enough water to survive.
“I put my heart and soul into this thing,” Tolmach said, looking out over the emerald green meadow where the vineyard used to be. “I would like to try it again sometime in the future, but it might take a long time.”
In the meantime, Tolmach said he is content using other people’s grapes to make the best wines he knows how. So far, his best has been pretty good. Over the past few years, Robert Parker has consistently scored Tolmach’s best wines in the 90s, including an impressive 95 for his 1996 Roll Ranch Syrah.
Despite his success, Tolmach has no desire to increase production. He is convinced that the only way he can make fine vintages is if he is involved in every step of the process, from the grape to the bottle.
“There’s a niche for wineries like ours,” he said. “People have an interest in individually made, handmade things, because everything else in our world is so corporate. Small wineries like ours are the antithesis of that. We have thrived because people are willing to pay a premium for something different.”