ON THE VINE: The San Benito Wine Trail {Edible Monterey Bay}

This piece was published in the Summer 2015 issue of Edible Monterey Bay. You may read it on their website: here. Or below...

  

ON THE VINE: The San Benito Wine Trail

One of the Monterey Bay’s best-kept secrets is there for the exploring

Story by Camilla M. Mann

Highway 156 is a road well traveled by people heading between the coast and the Central Valley, where Interstate 5 provides an artery the length of the state. For years, I’ve driven the road without looking beyond the patchwork of fields along the often-congested, yet picturesque two-lane road.

But venturing off 156 onto Union Road just south of Hollister, I’ve made several recent detours onto the San Benito County Wine Trail, which is less of a straight path than a lattice crisscrossing the valley between the Gavilan and the Quien Sabe Ranges. The vineyards that dot the region include both some of California’s oldest and youngest grapevines, grown by some of its most intrepid vintners, such as Calera Wine’s Josh Jensen and Bonny Doon’s Randall Grahm, and a number of lesser known yet equally interesting personalities.

What San Benito’s dozens of viticulturists and winemakers have in common is an attraction to the limestone-rich soils and moderating ocean breezes that make the area an extremely favorable one for growing wine grapes. But the similarities end there. Like the fault lines that interlace the area—the San Andreas Fault that flanks it to the west, the Quien Sabe Fault to the east, and the Sargent, Calaveras and Tres Pinos fault lines that it straddles—the group’s members like to shake things up. And because of that, they offer a diverse array of unique wines that make their tasting rooms well worth the trip.

Turning from Union onto Cienega Road, where most of the tasting rooms are situated, you enter a world of bucolic hills, hardy wildflowers and not much else. Especially—until now—there was not much in the way of food to match the fine local wines.

But that will likely change soon, when exciting, seasonal, farm-to- table foods prepared by exceptional chefs are expected to be offered at both DeRose Vineyards and Bonny Doon’s Popelouchum.

When I first started exploring San Benito’s wines, I contacted Ian Brand, a vintner known for his Salinas-based Le P’tit Paysan label. One of Wine Enthusiast magazine’s “40 Under 40: American Tastemakers” in 2013, Brand has broad experience with grapes from across our region through making wine for more than a dozen other Central Coast winery owners.

We discussed Napa and Cabernets, Paso Robles and Syrahs, and Sonoma Pinot Noirs. When I observed that there didn’t seem to be a definitive varietal coming out of San Benito, Brand concurred.

“San Benito is a younger region, so folks are planting a wide variety of grapes to see what works. The area is a county full of possibilities.” In essence, he says, the wines coming out of San Benito are a mixture of heritage and discovery.

On the heritage side of things you have DeRose Vineyards, which occupies a site established by French immigrant Theophile Vaché in the 1850s, making its vines some of the oldest in the state. The winery has changed hands several times and, for a spell, its vineyards—like others in much of the county—were almost the exclusive domain of former wine industry giant, Almaden.

“There’s a lot of great history here,” says vintner Pat DeRose, whose family in 1988 took over the winery after a period of neglect and rescued some 100 acres of abandoned vines from the clutches of weeds and thistles.

The winery now offers a handful of unique wines, and I was instantly enamored by the exotic, century-old Négrette, whose name means “little black one.” Called Pinot St. George before 1997, legend says Négrette, descended from Mavro rootstock, was transported to France by Knights Templar returning from Cyprus. DeRose’s Négrette is inky and aromatic with stone fruit bursting out of the glass and some spicy nuance.

Just down the road is another vineyard that dates back to the 1850s, the stunning red-brick Pietra Santa Winery. Pietra Santa means “sacred stone” in Italian, a reference to its limestone-laden soil, which has helped its Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese win numerous medals in the San Francisco Chronicle wine competition.

The 450-acre estate also produces organic and infused olive oils from its five varieties of trees, and offers picnic tables next to its vineyards. Further into the valley is Josh Jensen’s Calera Wine. The best known of the region’s established wineries, its pinot noirs, chardonnays and viogniers are perennial award winners.

Randall Grahm and his Bonny Doon Vineyards are most often associated with Santa Cruz County, where Grahm lives and established his first vineyard. His current tasting room is also in Davenport.

But early in his career, Grahm borrowed winemaking space at Calera, and in 2011 he returned to San Benito County to embark on what is arguably the most daring move of his career.

He purchased a 280-acre ranch in San Juan Bautista, which he calls Popelouchum, the native Mutsun word for “paradise,” and launched an effort to hybridize from seed 10,000 entirely new vinifera grape varietals. The ultimate aim: to make a true vin de terroir, a unique American wine that offers the fullest expression of place possible.

Thus far, just three-quarters of an acre of the estate is planted with well-established vines, and Grahm admits it may take many years to see the project through. “There’s a possibility I may not be around to know if it’s a success or failure,” Grahm says.

But the continuing drought and quickening climate change have made the need for new grape varieties better suited to the region— and to changed weather patterns in general—all the more urgent.

So as this issue of EMB was going to press, Grahm was preparing to launch a multi-platform crowdfunding campaign to raise $750,000 or more to finish the research needed to create the rest of the vines. He was expecting to offer to the campaign’s donors wine, naming rights and even early access to the plants.

Grahm is encouraged by the barrel of wine he made from Grenache harvested from the estate last year.

“I’m extremely happy with it,” says Grahm, noting that he “lives” for minerality in wines, and the deep-colored Grenache’s qualities include “really intense perfume, wonderful acidity, great body, this wonderful, earthy mineral aspect.”

Popelouchum is only open to the public during special events, of which Grahm plans a few for this fall.

Also engaged in notable new discoveries in San Benito’s wine country are two young winemakers—Ryan Kobza, founder of Kobza Wines, and Nicole Walsh, who has made wine for Bonny Doon for 14 years, and just last year bottled wine for the first time under her own Ser Wine Co. label.

Both are using an old-vine grape from the Wirz Vineyard in Cienega Valley called Cabernet Pfeffer.

Kobza and Walsh admit they were intrigued by the grape because it’s different.

“I love this wine. It’s distinctive and unique, layered with floral, fruit and spice. It’s delicate, but has structured tannin,” Walsh says. Walsh knows of less 10 acres of this extremely rare grape in the entire state of California—all of them in San Benito County.

Adding to the intrigue, the grape’s origin had been a matter of controversy until last year. A DNA study of the Wirz grapes conducted by UC Davis solved the mystery, finding that they are the French Mourtaou, which in France is sometimes called Pfeffer. The term “Cabernet Pfeffer” is used only in California, for both Mourtaou and Gros Verdot.

If there is a commonality I found in my travels to San Benito County’s tasting rooms and my encounters with its winemakers, it’s that the area’s vintners tend to be mavericks. They’re a highly varied group, but together they create a body of wines that honor the area’s heritage with distinct and delicious expressions of the region’s terroir. In short, it’s just what you’d want from a new wine discovery.

Camilla M. Mann is a food writer, photographer, adventurer and passionate cook. She blogs at culinary-adventures-with-cam.blogspot.com and lives in Seaside.