The Rhone Zone
NARROW COUNTRY ROADS SNAKE INTO THE WESTERN HILLS OF PASO ROBLES. Native oaks dripping with moss, fields of cattle, chalky soil, weathered barns and lupine-lined vineyards define this yet undiscovered, rugged wine region. But, unlike California wine landscapes in the Napa Valley, Santa Barbara or Sonoma, the scenery--much like its new breed of winemakers--does not lend itself to comparison. It’s not Napa. It’s not Bordeaux. It’s not Tuscany. Paso Robles is its own terroir--distinctly raw and distinctly Californian.
To understand terroir--what the French define as the total natural environment that imparts defining characteristics to wines from a specific viticultural site--is to understand Paso Robles’ emerging identity as a premier area for producing Rhone-style wines. The most common of these red varietals are Syrah (Shiraz, as it’s known in Australia), Mourvedre and Grenache. White varieties include Viognier, Roussanne and Marsanne. For the past several decades, Paso Robles (or Paso, as the locals call it) has been known for its mass-produced, and often inferior, wines from the appellation’s warmer eastern vineyards. But the cooler and rockier vineyards of the region’s west side resemble the southern Rhone in France both in climate and soil. A handful of Rhone devotees want to change the area’s wine-making image, and foreign producers are taking notice.
You might not expect much as you step through the door of winemaker Mat Garretson’s humble aluminum-clad warehouse in an industrial park off Highway 46 East. To the left of the tasting bar, there’s a shelf of T-shirts that bear the winery’s label, Garretson Wine Co., along with the slogan “Well, we’ve never heard of you either.” Garretson emerges from the cellar and says with a laugh, “Pretension is not part of my vocabulary.” The 40-year-old vintner, known in wine circles as “Mr. Viognier,” is one of the region’s most enthusiastic proponents of Rhone varietals--a passion that predates his arrival on the Paso scene. As the owner of a wine store in Atlanta, he founded the Viognier Guild in 1992, which later became known as the Hospice du Rhone--an annual event now centered in Paso that draws some 160 producers and 4,000 wine lovers from around the globe each May.
In 1994, Garretson moved to California to work as director of sales and marketing at Eberle Winery, a producer of high-end Cabernet Sauvignon. Gary Eberle, while at Estrella River Winery, was one of the area’s first vintners to experiment with a Syrah varietal, in 1978. “Gary Eberle knew my passion for Rhone wines, and he was open to exploring that avenue,” he says. “By the time I left we were doing eight Rhone-style wines.”
Garretson then found similar sensibilities at Wild Horse Winery, where he went to work with Ken Volk, forming the Equus label in 2000 to produce Viognier, Syrah, Roussane, Grenache and Mourvedre. For the last six years he also made wine under his own label at friends’ facilities. Last year he left Wild Horse to start his own winery, devoted exclusively to Rhone varietals. He’s currently producing 4,500 cases, most notably Viogniers, which have landed on the wine lists at such high-profile Los Angeles restaurants as Lucques, Campanile, Alex, Rockenwagner and Asia de Cuba. “The growth has been dramatic and continues to be,” Garretson says. “People within the wine industry recognize that this isn’t just a fad, and it’s something Paso does very well.”
Others are following suit. Today, 43 wineries are making Syrah and 23 are producing Viognier in the Paso Robles appellation. Of the 21 Rhone varieties, 12 are currently planted in the region. And while these plantings still cumulatively amount to less than 20% of Paso Robles fruit (the majority is still Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Zinfandel respectively), acreage being planted with Syrah specifically is escalating faster than any other single variety--both in Paso Robles and throughout California.
“Syrah delivers what Merlot promised,” says Bob Lindquist, owner and winemaker of Santa Barbara County’s Qupe Wine Cellars. Lindquist has been making Syrah from Paso Robles fruit under the Qupe label since 1982. While others were stuck in the Merlot frenzy of the ‘90s, Lindquist saw the region’s potential for Rhone-style wines. “Merlot was supposed to be the softer, fruitier version of Cabernet that was more approachable, and many Merlots didn’t turn out to be that way, but Syrah really is. It’s a big, rich wine that can go with the same foods that Cabernet does, but you don’t have to age it forever to get it right.”
Manfred Krankl, owner of Sine Qua Non winery in Santa Barbara County and Campanile’s founding partner, also recognized the compatibility of Paso’s Rhone-style wines with California cuisine. He was one of the first Los Angeles restaurateurs to feature Rhone blends in the late ‘80s on Campanile’s wine list when others weren’t yet ready to take the gamble. Krankl says, “I never felt like I was taking a risk putting those wines on the list. There were times when I had more Viogniers on our wine list than Chardonnays. Viognier goes particularly well with spicier and more flavorful foods. As for reds, Syrah and Grenache lend themselves to foods that are relatively hearty. It was just one of those things that if someone showed me a good wine, I couldn’t care less where it came from. And there’s no question that [Paso Robles] has terrific potential to be a wine-growing area that’s as recognizable as Napa or Sonoma.”
Ultimately, it all comes back to terroir. A great wine begins in the vineyard.
John Alban, a vintner in the neighboring Edna Valley and co-founder of Hospice du Rhone, was the first to plant both Viognier and Roussanne in California. “About 17 years ago I really started to look at where in California we could grow outstanding Rhone varieties. Paso Robles interested me because of the climate,” he says.
Like the southern Rhone, Paso’s hillsides are rich with loamy, calcium-rich soil. Located six miles from the coast halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the western region experiences cool marine breezes, which are pulled inland during the afternoon, creating daytime temperatures that fluctuate by as much as 40 to 50 degrees. Warm days shift into cool evenings, giving the grapes more complexity by extending the growing season (the cooler the region, the longer the hang-time on the vines, and the more intense the grape’s flavor). Due to high pH levels in the soils, the west side’s wines are also notable for their intense color. Whites are rich and golden; reds tend to be vibrant and jewel-toned. Simply put: Rhone varieties thrive under these conditions.
Yet in the early ‘80s, few premium vintners beyond Eberle or Lindquist recognized the region was well-suited to these grapes. “You had a combination of a very depressed wine market in the early ‘80s, and also just no recognition for these varieties at all. So it was tough at first to find anyone to consider getting involved in growing them. I talked people into letting me graft over their vines [with Rhone clones] and farm them, and then I paid something for the fruit when it came into production,” Alban says. “I look back on it now and it worked out very well, but it has the effect on me like when you look back on a car crash and start shaking. I have the benefit of hindsight and seeing that it worked, but I still ask myself ‘What was I thinking?’ I propagated and planted 32 acres of Viognier at a time when there were roughly 50 acres of Viognier in the world. That really is lunacy.”
But from madness comes genius, as the work of renegade winemaker Stephan Asseo illustrates. Four years ago, the 42-year-old Paris native moved to Paso Robles to make Bordeaux-Rhone varietal blends after producing16 vintages in Bordeaux. “When you leave Bordeaux to go to the New World in a wine region that is not established--that is not Napa--people think you’re a little bit crazy. People asked, ‘Why would you buy a regular car when you are already driving a Ferrari?’ ” he says. But for Asseo, the move was anything but a downgrade.
“I always wanted to blend [Bordeaux varietals] with others, such as Syrah, because I knew the results would be fantastic,” he says. “But you cannot do that in Bordeaux under the appellation controllee. I wanted to make something new that was big, but elegant.”
The result is L’Aventure Optimus--the 1999 vintage was a blend of 52% Syrah, 44% Cabernet Sauvignon and 4% Zinfandel. (The 2000 and 2001 vintages will also include Petit Verdot.) There’s no question that it’s uncoventional, but one taste will tell you the risk paid off. Dark cherry and plum flavors with spicy oak tones that don’t overpower make this one of the more intriguing Rhone blends coming out of this region.
Though Asseo’s approach to blending is decidely New World, his take on planting is rooted in tradition. He believes the region’s success ultimately lies in making complex, blended wines using fruit from more densely planted vineyards--a European viticultural model that is being increasingly adopted in Northern California.
But therein lies the challenge. What is the right model for Paso’s vineyards? Justin Smith, who is producing Syrah from his family’s James Berry vineyard, agrees that finding the right equation has been an obstacle for many vintners. Winemaking is a strange alchemy of soil and climate, varieties and skill. “Paso is a unique site, and it’s hard to look to other regions as an example because Paso is still so young, and viticulturally, we’re having to learn as we go along.” Smith’s father bought the 55-acre property (which has grown to 75 acres) 22 years ago and began farming grapes, first experimenting with Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc and later planting Syrah.
“Twenty years ago, we definitely couldn’t have made this quality of wine,” Smith says. “It took that 20 years of experimenting and figuring out exactly what does work in these soils and how to plant the vines, and that’s been our biggest obstacle. You can’t look to France to see what works because we have a California climate, and you can’t look to Napa because it has fertile valley soils.” Smith’s 350-case production of 2000 Saxum “Bone Rock” Syrah, is concentrated, lush and velvety. It’s a complex wine that couldn’t have come from a large-tract vineyard, where quantity is paramount. “You can’t make a good wine from bad grapes, and I’m very focused on the vineyard,” he adds. “That’s where I make my wines. I like to think there’s a chalkiness that comes from the rocky soils.”
And it’s these soils that led the Perrin family, owners of the famed Chateauneuf-du-Pape estate Chateau de Beaucastel, to establish their New World venture, Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles. In the mid-’80s, Jean-Pierre Perrin teamed up with veteran East Coast wine importer Robert Haas to search for a California property. “We were looking for high alkaline soils, like those in the southern Rhone,” says Haas. “We liked the climate of Paso Robles’ west side; it was pure chalk. And we said, ‘OK, this is where we plant the flag.’ ”
In 1989 they purchased a 120-acre parcel (which has been expanded to 150 acres) and began importing vine cuttings from Beaucastel’s southern Rhone estate in 1990. Due to “indexing” (the process that ensures vines meet USDA standards), the vines were quarantined at a holding station in Geneva, N.Y., for three years. But sacrificing quality for cost was not an option. “We were founding our whole enterprise on vines,” Haas says.
Today the winery vinifies Mourvedre, Grenache Noir, Syrah, Counouise, Roussanne, Viognier, Marsanne and Grenache Blanc from these transplants and produces 6,000 cases of both single-varietal and blended wines--a number they hope to increase to 23,000 cases by 2008. In the meantime, Tablas Creek has constructed three greenhouses in which they nurture their imported French cuttings, and, due to increasing interest from other vintners, sell to neighboring properties wishing to cultivate Rhone varieties.
Beaucastel, whose place in Rhone history dates back to the 1600s, is not the only international heavy-hitter to realize Paso’s potential. The Australian powerhouse Southcorp Wines (Penfolds’ parent) teamed with the Central Coast’s Niven family to produce a Paso Robles-designated Shiraz under their Seven Peaks label. Likewise, Napa’s Turley Wine Cellars, a producer of sought-after cult Zinfandels, has moved in. Two years ago, Turley bought the historic Pesenti Winery with the idea of producing more Zinfandel, a variety that also thrives in the region. But once Turley arrived, it decided to expand its portfolio to include Rhone varieties.
Turley winemaker Ehren Jordan, who apprenticed in northern Rhone cellars, says, “In a lot of ways Zinfandel and Rhone wines are a lot alike because they’re both fruit-driven flavorful wines. When we bought Pesenti, there was a small block of Grenache that was planted in the ‘40s, so we vinified it separately and said, ‘Wow, that’s really good.’ I should say I wasn’t totally surprised by that because I’ve had so many other Paso Rhones that were really good. But we liked the Grenache so well that we’ve torn out seven acres of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, which is not part of what Turley does, and replanted four acres to Grenache and three acres to Zinfandel.”
Turley now sells The White Coat--a white Rhone blend of Marsanne, Viognier and Roussanne--in its Paso Robles tasting room. It’s also been buying Syrah and Mourvedre, from which Jordan hopes to produce a red Rhone blend in the next few years. Similarly, though Paso’s own Justin Vineyards & Winery is known for its Bordeaux-style blends, winemaker and vice president of production Jeff Branco, whose Bordeaux-style 1997 Isosceles was named one of the top 10 wines in the world by the Wine Spectator, has been experimenting with Rhone varietals since ’98. He has produced 4,000 cases of three Rhone-style blends from the 2000 vintage, which will be released later this summer.
The big names are getting the attention, but ultimately it’s the small productions that keep the momentum going. Some of Paso’s better Rhones are produced in case lots of less than 2,000, including Justin Smith’s Saxum “Bone Rock” Syrah, Matt Trevisan’s Linne Calodo 2000 “LC Red” Rhone blend, Ken Winchester’s Winchester Vineyards Syrah and “Cuvee Voisin” blend, and Jeff Pipes’ Pipestone Vineyards Rhone blends. It’s these risk-takers and their commitment to quality that will secure Paso Robles a place in serious wine vernacular.
“There are definitely a lot of Don Quixotes out there jumping at windmills, and those are the people who succeed,” says Garretson. “I don’t think we’ll be the next Napa Valley in terms of tourism and population because we don’t have San Francisco in our backyard to fuel that. But long term, we’ll get our recognition.”
Paso Robles has proven it’s ready for its close-up. And the demand for Syrah--”the next Merlot”--in the national market may get Paso the attention Garretson and his fellow Rhone renegades are hoping for.