The exciting up-and-comers

BALLARD, CALIF. — Pick up a bottle of Santa Barbara County wine and, if it costs more than $25, it’s likely to have the name of a vineyard on the label -- a designation that tells you where the grapes were grown. Since almost all the region’s better wines designate the vineyard source of their grapes, you’ve probably seen Bien Nacido Vineyard or maybe Clos Pepe or Melville on labels. Lately, some truly exceptional wines have been carrying a few new names: White Hawk, Purisima Mountain, Larner, Cargasacchi and Westerly. These are the exciting young vineyards to watch.

“The region has a lot of young winemakers looking for great fruit,” says Kevin Merrill, vineyard manager for White Hawk Vineyard. “And you have a lot of rich guys coming here and buying vineyard land, hoping that they will develop the next Bien Nacido.”

The most respected vineyard in Santa Barbara County, Bien Nacido is a sprawling 850-acre patchwork of plots the Miller family started planting in the Santa Maria Valley in 1973. Home to Jim Clendenen’s Au Bon Climat and Bob Lindquist’s Qupé wineries, the cool-climate vineyard has been an important incubator for independent winemakers.

Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are the dominant grapes, but the Millers have planted dozens of varieties. Thirty-five wines carry the Bien Nacido Vineyard designation on their labels, making the vineyard a brand name.Clendenen first bought grapes from Bien Nacido in 1987 and now makes 20 of his 75 wines with Bien Nacido fruit. “The Millers indulge me,” Clendenen says. “And the vineyard has the variety of soils to support all of the obscure grape varieties I asked them to plant.”

With the notable exception of warm-climate grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel, most of the varieties survived, in part because of the wide range of soils. Bien Nacido has both calcareous and loamy topsoils that are dominated either by sand, clay, silt or shale. Its subsoils shift from shale to clay to sandstone.

The lay of the land is just as varied, from flat lands at a mere 200 feet of elevation to steep hillsides that climb to 1,700 feet.

The most interesting up-and-coming vineyards are far smaller properties than Bien Nacido, with more homogeneous soils and less diversity in the grapes they grow. Located in very different corners of Santa Barbara’s wine country, they represent some of the region’s extremes: the warmest and the coolest spots, the sandiest soils, the steepest hillsides. Considered in the order in which they were planted, from oldest to newest, the vineyards are snapshots of Santa Barbara terroir.

Neil and Francine Afromsky were the first to plant wine grapes in Happy Canyon, Santa Barbara’s warmest wine region when, in 1995, they started Westerly Vineyard, soon to be known as McGinley Vineyard. The 85-acre vineyard was planted with Bordeaux and Rhône grape varieties, including Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah -- but Sauvignon Blanc is the star.

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Hot days, cool nights

In Santa Barbara’s easternmost wine region, the summer’s dramatic diurnal temperature shift of 40 degrees between daytime highs of 95 to 100 degrees and the cool nights allows the grapes to ripen without losing their natural acidity, says Seth Kunin, the winemaker for the Afromskys’ Westerly Vineyard wines. The thick summertime marine layer rolls into the vineyard in the evening and clears by 9:30 in the morning.

The Sauvignon Blanc vineyards are relatively flat with loose sandy loam soils over calcareous ocean bottom and volcanic subsoils. The Sauvignon Blanc grapes were harvested the last two weeks of August.

The Afromskys sold their estate last year to Chicago financier Jack McGinley. The 2006 vintage will be the last to carry the Westerly Vineyard designation. The Afromskys retain the Westerly Vineyards brand and buy their grapes from McGinley. Ojai Vineyard, Margerum Wine Co., Fiddlehead and Brander wineries that buy Sauvignon Blanc from this vineyard will carry a McGinley Vineyard label on future vineyard designated wines.

In the heart of Santa Barbara’s wine region, electronic keyboard pioneer Tom Beckmen bought a 365-acre Ballard Canyon ranch in 1996 and developed the 125-acre Purisima Mountain Vineyard. His son Steve turned the vineyard into a leading producer of Rhône variety grapes in the Santa Barbara region. The climate is cooler than Happy Canyon to the east but warmer than Bien Nacido to the north. In 2003, Steve Beckmen shifted to biodynamic viticulture, an extreme form of organic farming. The Beckmens use 85% of the Purisima Mountain fruit in Beckmen Vineyards wines. The remainder of the grapes are harvested from plots that are custom-farmed for other wineries, including Qupé Winery, Hitching Post Wines, Margerum Wine Co. and Kenneth-Crawford Wines.

There are no flat vineyard plots in Purisima Mountain Vineyard; subsoils are limestone under loamy clay topsoils. Planted primarily with Syrah and Grenache, the steep hillsides rise to an elevation of 1,250 feet.

As he stands with a visitor on top of the highest hill, acres of grapevines cascading down the hillsides, Beckmen calls himself a “true believer” in biodynamics. A preparation of water and dead gopher ashes, it seems, rid him of a persistent gopher problem. He expects to start harvesting grapes in mid-September.

A couple of miles down Ballard Canyon Road from Beckmen is Larner Vineyard, created when Stevan and Christine Larner bought their 133-acre ranch in 1997, fulfilling a dream of owning a vineyard with their children. A Hollywood cinematographer whose credits include “Roots” and “Winds of War,” Larner had lived in Italy and so planted a little Malvasia Bianca, one of his favorite grapes, along with the Rhône varieties more typical of the region.

With loose, sandy soils, the vineyard rolls down a south-facing hillside. It’s a fertile ranch with more trees than other in-vogue vineyards such as White Hawk or Cargasacchi. Closer to town, it feels almost suburban. Nineteen winemakers buy the fruit, including Herman Story Wines, McPrice Meyers Wines, Palmina, Gainey, Bonacorsi, Jaffurs and Kunin.

Michael Larner took over management of the 34-acre vineyard after his father died in 2005. He plans to double the size of the vineyard in the next decade so he can make his own wines and complete his father’s dream.

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Steep, dry terrain

Northwest of Ballard Canyon, in cool, dry Cat Canyon near Los Alamos, pure sand soils make White Hawk Vineyard a most unusual site. The steep hillside vineyard feels like a desert. The anemic-looking vines survive on drip irrigation. Owned by Barry Henley of Chatsworth, the 77-acre vineyard was planted in 1997. There are 35 acres of Syrah and 30 acres of Chardonnay.

“We spoon-feed water to the vines,” Merrill says. “We work to keep things in balance.” But it’s not easy in such an inhospitable environment. “We’re almost growing these vines hydroponically,” he says.

It’s a vineyard favored by two of the region’s cult hero winemakers, Manfred Krankl and Adam Tolmach. Krankl buys White Hawk grapes for his Sine Qua Non wines, as does his former assistant winemaker, Maggie Harrison, for her Lillian Winery wines. Tolmach makes a White Hawk Syrah and so does his former assistant winemaker, Michael Meagher, under his Vino V Wines label. Herman Story, Calera and Sashi Moorman’s Piedrasassi are among the other wines using White Hawk fruit.

In 1998, in one of the coldest corners in the Santa Barbara region, Peter Cargasacchi planted a 16-acre Pinot Noir vineyard on his family’s bean farm on the far western edge of Santa Rita Hills. On a recent afternoon, he pointed out the ancient calcareous seabed subsoils visible as white streaks in the surrounding hillsides under loamy clay topsoils and then launched into a monologue on vineyard soils. It’s his favorite topic, and he shares his enthusiasm in a rat-a-tat recitation of facts about his land.

This is a difficult site for a vineyard, however. The gently sloping vineyards are buffeted much of the year by howling ocean winds. To mitigate the effect of the harsh climate, Cargasacchi allows a tangled mess of wild flowers and weeds to grow high between his vine rows. The vegetation, he says, delays grapevine flowering in the spring, decreasing the likelihood of frost damage. In the fall, the thick vegetation slows grape maturation to allow a balance of sugar and phenolic ripeness. A side benefit of the between-rows vegetation is that it attracts doves, which attract hawks, which scare away the starlings that like to eat grapes.

Ken Brown Wines, Brewer-Clifton, Siduri Winery, Loring Wine Co. and Hitching Post all produce Cargasacchi Vineyard designated wines. In 2002, Cargasacchi began making his own wine as well. He doesn’t plan to harvest until early October this year.

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Tasting the terroir of Santa Barbara

Thirsty for an exceptional wine from Santa Barbara County? Try a bottle from one of these five standout vineyards: McGinley Vineyard (formerly known as Westerly, which is what you’ll see on labels through the 2006 vintage), Cargasacchi Vineyard, Purisima Mountain Vineyard, White Hawk Vineyard or Larner Vineyard.

The Times Tasting Panel met last week to sample a few wines from each of these vineyards in an effort to gain an understanding of the terroir of each. We blind-tasted three wineries’ vineyard-designated bottlings from each of the five vineyards, and it was easy to find common threads in each flight: The terroir was definitely coming through.

Generally, we found the wines to be delightful. With the exception of the Siduri Pinot Noir, they were balanced, restrained, interesting and sophisticated.

The wines we tasted are not all readily available. Several were purchased at the Wine Cask in Santa Barbara, others at the Los Olivos Wine Merchant in Los Olivos. Some are also available at Silverlake Wine in Los Angeles, Mission Wines in South Pasadena and Twenty-Twenty Wines in West Los Angeles.

Joining me on the panel were Food editor Leslie Brenner, restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila, and Times contributor Patrick Comiskey. The wines are listed in the order in which they were tasted.

Westerly/McGinley Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc

2006 Ojai Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc (about $30)

2005 Margerum Wine Co. Sauvignon Blanc (about $20)

2006 Westerly Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc (about $18)

There was a pristine minerality and lively acidity in each of these three wines. With none of the heavy tropical fruit flavors typical of warm climate Sauvignon Blanc, the wines had in common a clean, Sancerre-like minerality.

Cargasacchi Vineyard Pinot Noir

2005 Cargasacchi Pinot Noir (about $44)

2005 Siduri Pinot Noir (about $93)

2005 Loring Pinot Noir (about $53)

Abundant herb and wild berry flavors in this trio came with racy black pepper and an underlying minerality. The delicate flavors that danced in the Cargasacchi and Loring Pinots didn’t come through so well in the heavily oaked Siduri wine.

Larner Vineyard Grenache

2005 Kenneth-Crawford Grenache (about $32)

2005 Herman Story Wines Grenache (about $31)

2005 Costa de Oro Dara Grenache (about $30)

More fruit-forward and jammy than the wines from the other vineyards, these Grenaches had an underlying minerality that kept them from going over the top and becoming cloying. They all tasted strongly of strawberries with a touch of bitter herbs and spices.

Purisima Mountain Vineyard Syrah

2004 Kenneth-Crawford Syrah (about $40)

2005 Beckmen Vineyard Syrah (about $40)

2005 Margerum Syrah (about $40)

Pronounced black raspberry flavors showed up in all three of these sophisticated wines. Lively acidity brought out the more subtle spice and herb flavors, particularly black pepper and thyme.

White Hawk Vineyard Syrah

2003 Ojai Vineyard Syrah (about $46)

2005 Cityslicker Syrah (private label, not available in retail outlets)

2004 Vino V Wines Syrah (about $46)

Dusty and earthy, these wines tasted as if they came from the same inkpot. There were black pepper, carob, cassis, and dark blackberry flavors and lively acidity in all three.

-- Corie Brown