A Pair of Pioneers Translate Northern Italy into Santa Barbara & More News Here

More than 40 years in the past, I spent a university summer season in Santa Barbara, by day learning postwar Italian cinema and at evening immersing myself within the native New Wave music scene, which drew on punk rock, surf rock, reggae and even tiki. Many of my friends sheared their hair and dyed what was left purple. It felt like a time of cultural revolution.

I drank student-grade wine and beer, oblivious to a different variety of revolution that was fomenting—the one that may flip Santa Barbara County into one of California’s most freewheeling wine scenes.

Over the years, as my requirements have improved, I’ve sampled higher and higher, vigorous and scrumptious wines from Santa Barbara County. This spring I used to be desperate to return—from my adopted house in Italy—to find Santa Barbara’s half in a brand new wave of Italian-inspired wines from California.

Even earlier than I crossed the ocean, I discovered a brand new vocabulary phrase to get the lay of the land: “transverse.” As within the Transverse Ranges of Southern and Central California—notably Santa Barbara’s Santa Ynez Mountains—that run west to east, as an alternative of northwest to southeast, with valleys fanned by cool Pacific winds.

This distinctive geographic scenario leads to a mosaic of microclimates wherein about 60 wine grape varieties are planted, from cool-climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay to heat-loving Grenache and Cabernet Sauvignon to a unusual Northern Italian bunch—the one which me.

“I thought this was the perfect place for Italian varieties like Nebbiolo, Barbera and Sangiovese, because it’s not too hot and not too cold,” says Louis Lucas, a still-spry 80-year-old pioneering grower who owns many vineyards within the Santa Ynez Valley.

Lucas was my first cease for good motive: The man is aware of grapegrowing. Back within the Nineteen Seventies, earlier than the crowds arrived, he planted hundreds of winery acres in Central California. He has offered grapes and wines to huge names in Napa and Sonoma corresponding to Beringer, Chateau Montelena and Kendall-Jackson.

In the Nineties, he and Royce Lewellen shaped Lucas & Lewellen and began making their very own wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rhône varieties.

And there was what Lucas calls in his attribute drawl, “the Italian thing.”

In 1996, the companions purchased the two-decade-old Los Alamos winery from their famously eccentric neighbor, grower Joe Carrari, who had planted Northern Italian varieties (many from cuttings carried over in suitcases) starting from Nebbiolo to Freisa to Pinot Grigio. After struggling to promote most of his grapes at a revenue, Carrari blended some unsold bulk Zinfandel, Merlot, Petite Sirah and Cabernet Sauvignon collectively and infamously retailed the outcome for $1.99 a bottle as “dago red.”

Lucas and Lewellen caught with the “Italian thing,” creating the Toccata label for half of their crop from Carrari’s previous winery. Led by winemaker Megan McGrath Gates, Toccata now sells about 4,000 circumstances yearly, direct to client, together with single-variety bottlings of Nebbiolo, Barbera, Dolcetto, Pinot Grigio and Malvasia, in addition to some uncommon Franco-Italian blends.

“Today it’s anything goes here,” says Lucas. “But like Syrah and Merlot, you have to plant most Italian varieties in interesting places to make interesting wines.”

A technology youthful than Lucas, Steve Clifton, 57, is a distinct fashion of pioneer—a winemaker who owns no vineyards however is all about attention-grabbing locations.

Clifton earned his wine celeb as half of the Brewer-Clifton winemaking duo who helped put Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noir and Chardonnay on the map beginning within the late Nineties.

Seven years in the past, when he and Greg Brewer started promoting their shares in Brewer-Clifton (now owned by Jackson Family Wines), Clifton turned to what he’d lengthy saved as his parallel “soul project”—his Northern Italian–impressed model, Rancho Sisquoc. He labored in a wine store and, in 1995, landed a winemaker publish at Beckman Vineyards.

After assembly Brewer, a former French professor, this odd couple of winemakers launched Brewer-Clifton in 1996 on a shoestring finances with bought grapes. For some time, they rented area in a glorified industrial park, becoming a member of a rising motion of boutique winemakers within the Lompoc Wine Ghetto.

But with the 1995 classic, Clifton had already begun Palmina, experimenting Italian-style at house with a ton of Sangiovese he purchased from Joe Carrari. “They were the only Italian grapes I could get,” he recollects. “It wasn’t very good, and I blended it with Merlot.”

Two vintages later, Clifton bought maintain of some Nebbiolo and made 72 circumstances in Lompoc. “I was in heaven,” he says. But heaven got here with a steep studying curve, as Nebbiolo defied most of the principles he knew about purple winegrowing and manufacturing.

“Any direct sunlight bleeds the color right out of Nebbiolo, and then you have super tannic rosé,” he says. “Nebbiolo is not for the faint of heart.”

In 2000, Clifton’s Nebbiolo training bought a lift when U.C. Santa Barbara’s Italian Studies Department invited him to take part in an occasion and tasting program specializing in Nebbiolo.

“I remember carrying a couple cases into the place on my shoulder, and when I get there I see Luciano Sandrone and Roberto Conterno,” Clifton remembers. “These guys were my idols.”

Clifton struck up a friendship with each Barolo icons and, through the years, they shared conventional strategies for farming, vinifying and growing old Nebbiolo.

Today Palmina makes about 7,000 circumstances a 12 months, utilizing grapes from throughout the county, with agreements to farm or buy the crops from a few half-dozen vineyards. Its harvest season stretches from August (for Pinot Grigio and Tocai Friulano) to November, when Nebbiolo and Lagrein are picked.

Clifton’s present Nebbiolo releases embrace a 2016 Santa Barbara mix and three single-vineyard choices (priced at $60 to $70) which are launched after at the very least a decade, together with his deep and brooding Nebbiolo Sisquoc, his lighter and extra floral Nebbiolo Honea and his mid-weight Nebbiolo Rocca.

Palmina could not have gotten the identical acclaim as Brewer-Clifton, however Clifton’s Nebbiolos are among the many most Old World–styled wines I’ve tasted within the New World.

“A lot of times when people make wine from Italian varieties, they just dabble in it,” muses Clifton. “But there’s a whole different mindset to Italian varieties. They are wines meant to be drunk with food. They’re not wines meant to be drunk with other wines.”

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For extra on the brand new wave of Italian varieties in California, learn Part 1: A Slice of Southern Italy in Paso Robles, Part 2: Bringing the Mediterranean to Northern California, and Part 3: Capitalist Kevin and Doomsday Dan.

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