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A Wine Journey along the Russian River The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution to this book provided by the General Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Associates. A Wine Journey along the Russian River ∂ STEVE HEIMOFF UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles London Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are by the author. Map art © 2005 by David Cain. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2005 by Steve Heimoª Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heimoª, Steve, 1946– A wine journey along the Russian river / Steve Heimoª. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-520-23985-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Wine and wine making—California—Russian River Valley. 2. Tourism—California—Russian River Valley. I. Title. tp557.h44 2005 641.2'2'0979418—dc22 2004024163 Manufactured in the United States of America 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 10987654321 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper).8 Dedicated to God CONTENTS List of Illustrations . xi Introduction . 1 1 Out of the Pangaean Mists a River Is Born . 9 2 Cyrus Alexander Finds a Valley . 27 3 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon . 51 4 Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon . 74 5 Healdsburg: The Crucial Turn West . 112 6 The Russian River Valley . 129 7 Pinot Noir Comes to Westside Road . 161 8 Clones, AVAs, and Storms: A Divertissement . 196 9 Into the Fog, and Above It: The Sonoma Coast . 222 Recommended Wines and Producers . 253 References and Suggested Reading . 259 Index . 263 ILLUSTRATIONS Terry Wright and rocks . 10 Dan Roberts . 13 Frank Pastori and Pete Seghesio Jr. 47 Tom Jordan and cigar . 54 Forrest Tancer at work at Iron Horse–Green Valley . 91 Dick Arrowood during the harvest . 98 Rob Davis and assistant . 108 Debbie Elliott-Fisk inspects a trench in wine country . 113 Oded Shakked . 119 Mike O‹cer at Two Acres Vineyard . 149 Rand Dericco . 153 Joe Jr. and Tom Rochioli . 170 Hampton Bynum with barrels of Pinot Noir . 175 Rod Berglund at Joseph Swan . 189 Merry Edwards . 194 Hugh Chappelle at Flowers . 200 Bob Cabral at Williams Selyem . 213 Joseph Bain . 219 Ehren Jordan at his Failla vineyard . 228 Marimar Torres . 238 xi Introduction The world possesses many great wine rivers that have writ their legends large in the epochal story of wine and the vine: the Loire, the Rhine and Mosel, the Rhône, the Dordogne and Garonne, the Saône, the Douro. Among this exalted company, the Russian River deserves a place. Though its known history is briefer than that of the ancient water- ways of old Europe, it has now begun to write its own wine saga—and the wines are great. Just a mention of the varied appellations through which the river flows and the great wineries, vineyards, and winemakers to be found along its banks and in the hills above evokes memories of bottle after bottle of succulent wine. Someone—I’m not sure who—reportedly once remarked, “There are no common wines in Vôsnes,” the Burgundy town that is home to the Do- maine de la Romanée-Conti and other prestigious properties. While it is not true that Sonoma County has never produced a common wine, most impartial observers would agree that few wine regions in the world enjoy as high an overall reputation. To be sure, there is no objective way of measuring the inherent qual- ity of the wines of any given region or of fairly comparing one region to another. Such things are, by their very nature, subjective. But I have re- viewed more than twelve thousand wines in my career, and I find that Sonoma wines are consistently at or near the top of the list in almost every 1 ~INTRODUCTION~ variety and type, including sparkling. Individual Sonoma wines and vine- yards do get the credit they deserve. But all too often lost in the glare is the role of the Russian River in linking most of Sonoma County under a single umbrella of quality. ∂ The river, together with its associated tributaries, is the central nervous system of Sonoma County viticulture, with the exception of the Sonoma Valley proper, where the river has no geophysical impact. It drains 1,485 square miles in Mendocino and Sonoma counties and a few additional square miles in Lake County. More than two hundred named creeks and streams feed into its watershed, as well as numberless unnamed ones, many of which appear only in the rainy winter months. By summer’s drought, they become arroyos secos, dusty dry washes choked with poison oak and wild blackberry. Sonoma County now includes thirteen American Viticultural Areas, or AVAs, totaling nearly 60,000 acres of vineyards, whose fruit is made into wine by close to 200 wineries. To put these numbers in context, Napa Valley, just across the Mayacamas Mountains to the east, contains about 45,000 acres of vines and about 270 wineries. Sonoma’s greater acreage of vines also includes a much broader range of varietals than Napa or, for that matter, any other county in California. In the monoculture of Napa, three out of every four grapes is red, with Cabernet Sauvignon dominating. In the crush season of 2002, more than 80 percent of all red grapes processed in Napa were of Bordeaux varieties. In Sonoma, only a little more than half the planted acreage is to red grapes, 36 percent of them Cabernet Sauvignon in 2002. At least sixty varietals of the species Vitis vinifera are grown within the county’s borders. In the breadth 2 ~INTRODUCTION~ and depth of its grape types, Sonoma is California’s winiest, most cos- mopolitan, and most experimental county—and much of the reason for that has to do with the Russian River. ∂ Not only vineyards mark the region. Nearly every sort of geologic feature found in California makes an appearance within the Russian River’s wa- tershed: almost-mile-high mountains, their escarpments piled deep with snow in winter; broad, windswept upland plains, where sheep and cattle graze on grassy highlands; estuarial lagoons and reedy swamps and marshes, particularly in the cool south; temperate rain forests of giant ferns and magnificent, long-lived coast redwood and Douglas fir; rocky coastlands and wide, sandy beaches lapped by pounding breakers; gentle valleys and fertile, rolling farmland; and arid inland savannahs where little but drought- resistant scrub can grow. Within this watershed, too, are cities and rapidly urbanizing suburbs. Everyone wants to live in a place that is beautiful, that is not too far re- moved from the allures of San Francisco, and that possesses a benign Mediterranean climate. This book reflects a little of the tension that is created when people by the millions invade pristine nature. ∂ Today, we have a Russian River Valley AVA, or appellation (I will use the terms interchangeably, although, legally, they have slightly diªerent mean- ings). But the real Russian River Valley is the one created by Mother Na- ture, not the artificial designation approved by the U.S. Bureau of Alco- hol, Tobacco, and Firearms in 1983. In the perceived world of wine, however, 3 ~INTRODUCTION~ this real valley has become obscured in a welter of appellations, which were designed to promote clarity but in actuality have accomplished just the opposite. The federal government established the system of AVAs in the United States over a period of a few years spanning the late 1970s and early 1980s. Napa Valley was the first AVA to be o‹cially approved in California, in March 1981. (It was not the first in the country—Augusta, Missouri, beat Napa by nine months.) But the Sonomans bested the Napans on at least one score in those early years: the sheer number of appellations they churned out. In retro- spect, Sonomans were far more astute in apprehending the need, or desire, on the part of the public for ever-smaller appellations as more precise indices of wine origin. In 1982, Sonoma Valley was approved; before the decade was out, in a whirlwind of activity, Sonoma had launched twelve more AVAs. Sonoma’s most frenzied year was 1983, the annus mirabilis when Green Valley, Dry Creek Valley, Chalk Hill, Knights Valley, and the Rus- sian River Valley arrived on the scene—not to mention Carneros, an ap- pellation Sonoma shares with Napa. In contrast, Napa County for years seemed content to sit back and digest the big fat cow of Napa Valley, al- though it, too, eventually succumbed to appellation mania; the county now has fifteen AVAs. Precisely because of the eagerness with which Sonomans carved up their county so early in the game, people have missed the importance of the Russian River as a wine river; with all those interesting trees, they lost sight of the forest. The Sonomans’ intentions were good, but the sense of wineland unity the river could have provided vanished. As a result, Sonoma became a vinously fractured place, like a rare vase that falls to the ground and shatters. All those AVAs can indeed seem confusing, even to the initiated. 4 ~INTRODUCTION~ Happily, that is now changing, albeit slowly. Appellation boundaries are being redrawn to more closely conform to physical realities, and some of the newer AVAs, such as Rockpile, as well as those yet to come (the Russian River Valley and Carneros both are likely to be further appellated), make a great deal of sense. But through the chaos, one element winds its way consistently and reassuringly, like the familiar theme in a fugue: the Russian River.

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