With greatness in its sights

The country road unfurls through a misty landscape of giant trees and meadows dotted with grazing deer. Vines appear to one side, and then a weathered old barn in a grove of redwoods.

A glimpse of stacked wooden barrels through the open barn doors tells you the place is a winery, and a small sign invites you to come in and taste. Accept the invitation and you may well encounter world-class wines, especially Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

The scene is typical of Sonoma County’s wine country. There are lots of enticing back roads with tasting adventures just around the next bend. I’ve described Westside Road in the Russian River Valley, but there are many similar scenes in Alexander Valley, Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma Valley and half a dozen or so other wine enclaves within the Sonoma County lines. I think of them fondly when I’m stuck in Napa Valley traffic, bathed in the fumes of a tour bus waiting to turn into a winery-cum-theme park.

Napa County is gorgeous too, of course. But its self-consciously glamorous sensibility, evoking Bordeaux, is quite different from Sonoma County’s earthier, more Burgundian farm-country feel.

Next-door neighbors across a craggy fence called the Mayacamas Range, Napa and Sonoma have evolved quite differently in the past few decades. Like its French model, Napa is virtually a wine monoculture: Less than half the size of Sonoma, it has nearly as many acres of wine grapes and almost twice as many wineries. And like Bordeaux, Napa Valley is a magnet for wealthy seekers of a stylized wine country lifestyle. Its chateau-like wineries concentrate mostly on Bordeaux-style wines made primarily from Bordeaux grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

By contrast, Sonoma County is a much larger, more diverse region with a decidedly agricultural ambience. Glamorous wineries are few and far between; many facilities are housed in old barns or their modern equivalents. Growers get good prices for their fruit, especially Pinot Noir and old-vine Zinfandel, but nothing near the $20,000 a ton that was the top reported price for Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon in 2004.

And while Sonoma’s top Pinot producers routinely get $60 a bottle or more, there’s nothing on the west side of the Mayacamas to match Napa’s $200-a-bottle “cult” Cabernets.

Yet Sonoma’s diverse terrains and climates offer excellent places to grow just about any wine grape, and the range and consistent high quality of Sonoma County wines reflect that.

Ironically, that viticultural strength has historically been a weakness when it comes to establishing an image with consumers. Like the cliche of the talented actor/writer/director/producer/composer/key grip who can’t concentrate on one thing long enough to make the big time, Sonoma has done so many things well that it’s always gotten plenty of work without achieving Napa’s star status.

Instead, each of Sonoma County’s distinctive AVAs -- American Viticultural Areas -- has worked to establish its own character. Sonoma Valley, where wine production began early in the 19th century, produces heady Cabernets and luscious Zinfandels, among other varietals. Alexander Valley, which boasts one of California’s most scenic wine routes (Highway 128), is noted for the fruity richness of its Merlots, Zins and Sauvignon Blancs. Picture-perfect Dry Creek Valley -- it really does look like a storybook illustration -- is known worldwide for uniquely compelling old-vine Zins.

And in the past few vintages, three AVAs in the western half of the county have emerged -- not coincidentally -- as the New World capital of the great Burgundian grapes, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. (Sonoma County accounts for nearly 20% of California’s Chardonnay acreage and almost half of its Pinot Noir, and most of those vines are in the western half of the county.) An explosion of new producers, many of them small-quantity artisans, has presented wine lovers with a feast of bottlings featuring the luscious ripeness of the 2002s and the small-crop intensity of the 2003s.

“There are endless nuances in Pinot and Chard from site to site throughout the Russian River Valley region,” says Hugh Chappelle, winemaker at Lynmar in Sebastopol and previously at Flowers on Camp Meeting Ridge near the coast. He’s worked with Pinot and Chardonnay grapes from Russian River, up and down the coastal ridges, and Green Valley. “You get a tremendous variety of expressions, especially when you plant different clones and selections. Even in Green Valley, small as it is, there can be big differences from place to place.”

A French soul mate

The rugged terrain of the Russian River Valley, bathed by fog most mornings, tends to produce wines that distantly resemble those of Burgundy’s Cote de Nuits -- powerful, with generous perfume, fine weight on the palate, and firm structure. The Pinots tend to have broad, velvety tannins, and the Chardonnays combine richness and finesse.

The first Pinot vines were planted in the Russian River Valley in the late 1960s by a small cluster of growers including Joseph Rochioli Jr. and Joseph Swan. The first varietal Pinot bottlings came in the early ‘70s.

From the beginning they were terroir-oriented, inspired by the example of Burgundy. Swan bottled a small amount of estate Pinot Noir in 1972 and a commercial volume in ‘73; the winery is now managed by his son-in-law, Rod Berglund.

Davis Bynum produced a ’73 Pinot from Rochioli grapes and has bottled a Rochioli Pinot Noir every year since. That Davis Bynum ’73 was the first Pinot Noir, and possibly the first wine, to be labeled Russian River Valley -- a decade before the Russian River Valley AVA was established.

Davis Bynum’s first winemaker, Gary Farrell, went on to become a Pinot star in his own right, slowly building a cult following through the 1980s and ‘90s before founding his own architecturally stunning winery on a ridge overlooking the river in 2000. His big, structured wines exemplify the Russian River Valley style, as do those from (to choose just a few examples) Lynmar, Williams Selyem, Rochioli, Porter Creek and Martinelli.

The even foggier and colder Green Valley AVA, just to the south of the river, gives more Cote de Beaune-style wines with brilliant, succulent acidity, pretty aromas and intense, juicy flavors. The local climate is heavily influenced by fog that pours in across the coastal marshes south of Bodega Bay, chilling the area to the point that it’s virtually impossible to grow commercial-grade Cabernet, and even Pinot and Chardonnay are challenged in the coolest years. Mostly, however, the combination of cool marine air and the area’s signature Goldridge soil, almost pure sand, favor the Burgundian grapes and also (in the warmest locations) give distinctive Syrah.

Recent advances in viticulture -- carefully chosen clones and rootstocks, along with more precise vine management -- have allowed growers to get the most out of these sensitive grape varieties in a marginal climate. Yet wine lovers don’t always know that the amazing wine they’re drinking comes from Green Valley: Since the Green Valley AVA lies within the Russian River Valley AVA, its wines are entitled to be labeled with either AVA. And they are often labeled Russian River Valley because that’s still deemed more recognizable in the marketplace. Also, a Green Valley wine may not be bottled separately because its distinctive high-toned character makes a vital contribution to a Russian River Valley blend. Producers whose wines tend to show the Green Valley character even when labeled Russian River Valley include Marimar Torres, Merry Edwards, Iron Horse, Scherrer and Dehlinger, among others.

The extreme western ridges of the Sonoma Coast, where many vineyards have an ocean view, don’t really have a clear Burgundy counterpart -- it’s all New World. Sonoma Coast wines tend to have high-toned spice and fruit, a succulent palate with firm structure and strong tannins. That shows in Sonoma Coast Pinots and Chardonnays from Hartford, Flowers, Cobb and Radio-Coteau.

Growing excitement

The Sonoma Coast AVA was created primarily as a marketing tool for large wineries and is too big (nearly half of the county) to have real viticultural meaning. But starting in the mid-1990s, the true Sonoma coast -- the ridges overlooking the Pacific -- became one of the most exciting California wine areas.

In vineyards such as Flowers’ Camp Meeting Ridge, the vines perch just above the fog line, so they bask in full sun while being gently air-conditioned. New vineyards, mostly Pinot Noir and Chardonnay with increasing Syrah, are being planted at a feverish pace on those western ridges from Annapolis in the north to Occidental Ridge above Bodega Bay.

“It’s not easy growing grapes out there,” notes Hartford Family Winery winemaker Mike Sullivan, “but the wines are sure worth the trouble.”

After the cult Pinot crowd went crazy over the initial Sonoma Coast offerings from producers such as Flowers, Littorai and Siduri in the late 1990s, acreage on the seaward ridges exploded, and a growing number of Russian River Valley wineries began purchasing Sonoma Coast fruit for their own bottlings.

Syrah is just getting started in Sonoma County, but acreage and producers are multiplying rapidly, especially in the Green Valley and Sonoma Coast AVAs. Winemaker Pax Mahle is leading the Syrah charge. He founded his all-Syrah Pax label in 2000 and now bottles about a dozen single-vineyard Syrahs and Syrah blends each vintage.

“This is the place,” he says. “You’ve got the fog, which makes a long, cool growing season, and a tremendous amount of diversity in soil. It’s different from vintage to vintage, which is what I’m after. And it’s Syrah with a soul.” Several other producers with noteworthy west-county Syrahs include Radio-Coteau, Dutton Goldfield and Dehlinger.

Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Syrah are among the most exalted wine grapes on the planet. That’s largely due to the fact that they’re three of the most expressive varieties. But only when they’re planted in the right places.

In the right terroir (a French name for the vine’s environment, above and below the ground), these vines are sensitive instruments that can gauge the vibe of their soil and climate and express that nature in their fruit. Judicious winemaking converts the grapes into a bottled essence of place -- the expression of a certain summer in a particular locale. Chardonnay can do the same thing: Burgundians call it a tool for extracting flavor from the soil.

The trick has been finding the most promising sites in the rugged Coast Range, where the soils vary wildly from place to place. These mountains, as John McPhee wrote in “Basin and Range,” “are a kind of berm that was pushed up out of the water by the incoming plate, including large slices of the seafloor and a jumble of oceanic and continental materials known to geologists as the Franciscan melange.” Finding the right soils for grapevines in such “mountains of bulldozed hash” is a long, vintage-by-vintage process of exploration through taste.

The Burgundian notion of site-expressive Pinot Noir and Chardonnay has been a central element in the Russian River Valley’s emergence as a notable New World appellation. Yet while it took thousands of years for Pinot Noir to emerge as the primary red grape of Burgundy, an echo of that process in Sonoma County has taken less than half a century.