California coastal dreamin' is a new star on the rise in the golden west?

Cheers, March, 2002 by Dan Berger

Dan Lee pointed to a ridge just north of his vineyard and said, "You could almost set your clock by the winds. They come through there just about 3:30 every afternoon."

Lee, owner of Morgan Vineyards nearby, sees the wind as one of his vines' best friends, though just a few years ago it was an enemy to all of Monterey County, but less than a decade ago, some growers found they could tame the wind and turn it to their advantage.

Today, some wine lovers say that this area known as Santa Lucia Highlands will soon rival Russian River, Carneros and Santa Maria as a haven for great Pinot Noir.

Santa Lucia Highlands is one of the newest and least well known areas of California's star growing region, the vast Central Coast, for fine quality wine. The Central Coast may be less well known than Napa and Sonoma as an area to make world-class wine, but the region is growing rapidly in stature.

WHERE THE GRAPES

The Central Coast stretches hundreds of miles from Ventura County in the south to the San Francisco Bay area in the north. And the problem with speaking of "the Central Coast," as a wine region is that it really is a panoply of smaller regions, each with its own unique characteristics.

It is this diversity that makes the region so potentially rewarding for consumers who understand the sub-regions. Sure, the phrase "Central Coast" on a wine label indicates a wine of higher quality than one that says simply "California," but there is even more distinction in a wine with one of the sub-regional appellations such as Santa Maria, Santa Ynez Valley, or Santa Lucia Highlands.

Among the Central Coast,s more distinctive larger regions is the one called Santa Barbara, pioneered in the 1970s by wineries like Firestone, Zaca Mesa, Au Bon Climat (ABC), Qupe, and Sanford, and more recently by wineries like Foxen, Fess Parker, Lane Tanner, and Stolpman.

Santa Barbara has both warmer and cooler areas. The latter, closer to the Pacific Ocean, is home to excellent Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays. The dominant names here are Meridian, Mondavi and Kendall-Jackson (the latter two wineries get a huge share of their Burgundian grapes here).

But it's the smaller houses that have made the greatest impact with sub-regional names. Sanford, ABC's Jim Clendenen, and Mondavi's Byron are making dramatic strides in quality with Chardonnay that features a tropical fruit and pumpkin squash sort of aroma.

Also, they all make a startlingly fine Pinot Noir, a wine that often features a combination of California racy fruit with Burgundian earth tones. The fruit notes lean on plum with a trace of fresh tomato.

In the warmer regions, such as the Santa Ynez Valley, wineries like Brander make excellent warmer-climate wines such as Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon.

COOL PACIFIC

On up the road, the cooling marine breezes of the Pacific permit cool-climate wines to be produced in the Santa Maria Valley, a region also favored by a growing number of wineries that make a cool-climate version of Syrah. Qupe's Bob Lindquist has researched cool-climate Syrah, and makes a startlingly long-lived version of this traditionally warm-climate grape. Ken Brown at Byron also now produces a Syrah-based Rhone blend called To that features cooler-climate fruit.

Southern San Luis Obispo County, just north of Santa Maria, is also cool enough to grow brilliant Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and it's where Talley Vineyards and Edna Valley Vineyards, among others, make award-winning wines, Chardonnay as well as Pinot. It is also home to a huge Pinot Noir festival each March.

The warmest region of California's Central Coast is Paso Robles, a region that recently has discovered it can grow Syrah with the best of them, but an area whose Cabernet Sauvignons are also long renowned.

Following pioneering work done by Gary Eberle, numerous wineries have planted Cabernet here, and among the best are Eberle, Justin, and J. Lohr.

Eberle's stunning Syrahs (not to mention Barbera and other dark red grape varieties) have given Paso Robles a new world image, and now numerous larger companies have planted here, namely Gallo, Fetzer (Brown-Forman), Kendall-Jackson, Mondavi, and huge Australian producer Southcorp (Penfolds). And many Napa and Sonoma wineries also are planting vines here.

One of the largest and most successful wineries here is Meridian, a Beringer Blass project, where wine makers Chuck Ortman and Signe Zoller make a line of dramatically fine red wines, using local Cabernet Sauvignon along with Chardonnay and Pinot from the cooler regions to the south.

DOWN IN MONTEREY

The broadest of Central Coast appellation is Monterey County, a region with nearly 40,000 acres of vines, once known for wines that display more distinctively herbal flavors. But pioneering work by Jekel in the south, Doug Meador at Ventana Vineyards in the north (in the area known as Arroyo Seco), and at Morgan and Talbott along the highlands have given the county a new persona. It has been a challenge.

Deep-trenched Monterey Bay, south of San Francisco, generates cold winds that race down the Salinas Valley like a wind tunnel, making ripening of some grape varieties quite difficult.