The intoxicating aroma of concentrated black cherry hangs in the air at a local winery—almost as much as does the anticipation as the priciest wine grapes Dave Potter has ever purchased hibernate in barrels.
Usually passionate about Rhone varietals—Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvedre—Potter is trying his purple-stained hand at Pinot Noir as well this year.
“I’ve always been fascinated by Pinot, and I’ve always wanted to dabble with it, so I took the plunge,” said Potter, who has a winery in Santa Maria and a Municipal Winemakers’ tasting room near Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara.
He took the plunge indeed: “It’s the most expensive fruit I’ve ever bought and some of the most expensive I think in the county, but at the same time, it’s probably cheaper than if I was buying Cabernet [Sauvignon] from Napa.”
He paid $3,500 a ton for Pinot Noir grapes from Rita’s Crown Vineyard, located on a very steep hillside in the highly acclaimed Santa Rita Hills wine region near Lompoc.
Coastal Vineyard Care’s Jeff Newton said 2011 Pinot Noir from the Sta. Rita Hills AVA ranges in price from $3,000 to $4,500 a ton. The 2010 state average for red wine grapes was $625 a ton, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Grape Crush Report.
“The reason why it’s so expensive is because they can never make very good yields out there, the growing conditions are difficult,” Potter explained. “It’s a very cool climate, it’s super windy, the soils are really difficult, so the yields are never really high, so they have to charge a lot per ton to make it worth it for them … and it probably cost them somewhere around [5,000] or 6,000 dollars an acre to farm it, and because the yield was so low this year, they were just getting a ton an acre, so the vineyard is losing money.”
He took that ton and a half of Pinot Noir harvested on Sept. 21 back to the winery where it fermented in skins for 10 days, was pressed, and the wine—now described by Potter as “really dark, really great concentration, beautiful”—will age in French oak barrels in the winery until bottling time more than a year from now.
The young wine already has a catchy nickname.
“It’s a friend’s idea to call it ‘40 Buck Chuck,’” he said. “Yeah, I like that name. Well, I don’t know if we’ll get in trouble, because Franzia is a pretty tough cookie. We might call it that in the tasting room, locally. I don’t know if we’ll be able to put that on the label.”
Probably not. Franzia is Fred Franzia of the Bronco Wine Company, best known for producing the popular Charles Shaw wines, known nationwide as “Two Buck Chuck,” because they sell for $1.99 a bottle.
Why charge $40 a bottle?
“There’s kind of a rule of thumb in the industry that a grape price is divided by 100 … if you paid $1,500 a ton, then you need to get at least $15 a bottle to make it work,” Potter explained.
He’s right about the grape growers in Santa Barbara County having a very tough year.
The late April freeze affected fruitfulness in many vineyards, and cool summer temperatures delayed ripening, so low yields hurt the growers.
“I don’t know any vineyards that were profitable this year,” said Jim Stollberg, owner of Maverick Farming Co. in Santa Maria.
He manages three vineyards covering 450 acres.
“This year, tonnage was significantly down, close to 50 percent down,” Stollberg said. “We spent more money than usual to protect less fruit.”
Because of the threat of mildew earlier this year from the colder-than-normal conditions, laborers had to make more passes through the vines, opening up the canopies, removing leaves and shoots to allow more warm sunshine in. Plus, they had to buy and use more fungicides, adding to the cost of doing business.
Fortunately, local grape prices were 30 percent higher this year than in 2010, according to Stollberg. He said the average price for Chardonnay grapes in the Santa Maria Valley this year was $1,200 a ton, while Pinot Noir fetched $1,850 a ton.
And Stollberg is pleased with the crop that they did get: “We really are pretty optimistic on the quality. Wineries are really happy with the quality. The reds will show pretty darn good.”
The owner of Buttonwood Farm Winery in Solvang, Bret Davenport, concurs: “This year, we were dealt a quantity blow, but received a quality reward. Our job is to maintain good, sustainable farming practices in the vineyard and an eye to detail in the cellar. Other than that, we can only work with what the vintage provides. In this case, consumers are the winners as quality will be incredibly high, and I’m betting that prices will remain as they are today.”
Nicholas Miller, of the Bien Nacido Vineyard in Santa Maria, said, “While years like this prove challenging, they are also very exciting to show how good farming and winemaking can shine through.”
In the meantime, vineyard managers hope for warmer weather in 2012 and better set conditions from mid-May through July, a critical viticulture stage that determines the potential grape crop size.
Sun wine and food writer Wendy Thies Sell has a crush on Pinot Noir. Send story suggestions to wthies@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 8-15, 2011.