Vintus

Alma Rosa winery received a gold and silver award for the 2008 Chardonnay Santa Barbara County and the 2007 Alma Rosa Pinot Noir La Encantada, respectively, at the second annual Sommelier Challenge this fall. The challenge took place in San Diego, CA, where twelve sommeliers from the nation’s finest restaurants gathered to talk shop and evaluate 635 fine wines.

Congratulations to this California favorite! Full results are here.

A recent post on alongpour.com tells the colorful and passionate story of Alma Rosa’s Richard Sanford, America’s pinot pioneer. A Vietnam veteran who got into wine to be more earthly connected after the war, he opted out of the UC Davis route to pursue grape-growing and discovered the overlooked treasure of the Santa Rita Hills. Since selling off his stake in the eponymous Sanford Winery, Richard has turned his sights to organic farming at Alma Rosa, where he works with his wife Thekla growing grapes in a completely organic and sustainable environment.

“How will Richard be judged by time, as a winemaker, as a man? When winemakers would tell me they were inspired by Richard, it wasn’t solely because of his pioneering work with Pinot Noir, it was because of who he is as a person. It isn’t a put on kindness, but a genuine interest in others that has endured both Richard and his beloved wife Thekla to many.”

Read the whole article here.

The Wall Street Journal’s Jay McIerney sings the praises of the Santa Rita Hills in his latest column, calling the appellation “the hottest area for Chardonnay” in California and paying homage to Richard Sanford of Alma Rosa, the region’s founder. Says McIerney:

“Back in 1970, after falling in love with the wines of Burgundy, a young Vietnam veteran named Richard Sanford was scouring California for a suitable climate in which to grow the Burgundian varietals of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Mr. Sanford drove up and down the Santa Ynez Valley in a pickup truck with a thermometer, checking temperatures every mile. Eventually he decided that the cool western part of the valley had just the climate he was looking for. With a partner he bought land and planted the Sanford & Benedict Vineyard, first with Pinot and later with Chardonnay. The team made Pinots and Chardonnays and sold grapes to others, including Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat, Santa Barbara’s rock ‘n’ roll version of Robert Mondavi. Mr. Sanford eventually lost control of the vineyard and the winery that bears his name in a dispute with a corporate partner, and now makes wines under the Alma Rosa label.”

The Los Angeles Times Magazine has a great article up by Wes Hagen, vineyard manager of Clos Pepe, tracing the development of Pinot Noir in the Santa Rita Hills right back to our own Richard Sanford of Alma Rosa.

“The story of pinot noir in the Santa Rita Hills starts on a destroyer in Vietnam. Richard Sanford graduated from UC Berkeley in 1965 with a degree in geography, then he was drafted and sent off to war. Discharged from the navy in the Philippines, Sanford ‘returned the long way through Nepal, India, the Mideast and Europe.’ His ‘spirit quest’ convinced him the war was futile, and when he returned to the States, he sought to ground himself. Needing an ‘earth connection,’ Sanford embraced agriculture. Thinking back to a bottle of Volnay (Burgundian pinot noir) he’d tasted with a shipmate in the war, he began a period of intense viticultural study, preparing himself for the task of finding a perfect climate for the grape and planting his first vines.

“‘Remembering that fine Volnay, I decided pinot noir in California, which often had a pruney, overripe character, was being grown in too warm a climate,’ he said. ‘I collected 100 years of climate data from Burgundy and from all over California. I soon became aware of a remarkable geographic anomaly: the Transverse mountain range. The unique east-west orientation of the mountains allowed the cool, maritime winds to moderate the growing climate in these coastal valleys.’”

Those transverse mountain ranges are the key to great Pinot Noir at Alma Rosa, a site Richard selected based on its strong maritime influence. The cool climate allows the grapes to ripen slowly, and the continuous winds help to avoid both frost and mildew damage. The resulting wines show all the finesse and poise that great Pinots can have, a testament to Richard’s vision as America’s Pinot Pioneer.

Full article is here.

Spring is coming, and rock fish season has opened up in California and other states. There’s nothing quite like simply prepared snapper or grouper, and, when the fish is at its peak, it calls for a ceviche. The Santa Maria Times has a great recipe here. And the best wine for this delicacy The Times recommends the fresh, citrusy Alma Rosa Pinot Blanc for it’s aromas of pear and melon, all backed by a peppery spiciness.

Steve Heimoff’s tour of the Central Coast continues with an appreciation of Santa Barbara Chardonnay. It seems like you can now find Chardonnay from everywhere in the world; truly great Chardonnay, however, takes some pretty specific conditions.

Santa Barbera is one of the few places in California where the weather is just right: just warm enough to allow the grapes to ripen fully but slowly, just cool enough to preserve that bracing acidity, just wet enough to prevent stress to the vine, and just dry enough in the fall to allow for selective harvesting. Add to that a fantastic chalky subsoil, and you’ve got the recipe for some exceptional wines.

As Heimoff says:

“Santa Barbara County is one of California’s great Chardonnay areas and a case can be made that it is the greatest. Certainly there’s a consistency of style. The wines always are acidic; that goes without saying. Acidity is one of the touchstones of a great wine, especially a white one, and super-especially when the fruit is as ripe as it tends to get in Santa Barbara. The reason the fruit gets so ripe is because the growing season is incredibly long. Budbreak begins earlier than in the North Coast, and harvest can extend as long and leisurely as the grower wants. It doesn’t rain much down here, and such rains as do fall usually wait until November. That means the grapes can hang, hang, hang until they rid themselves of all green flavors and develop marvelously fruity ones. To my palate the fruits tend toward pineapples, Meyer lemons and limes, but that’s over-simplifying. The pineapples often have a grilled quality, as if they’d been on a skewer barbecued over hot red oak. The Meyer lemons have an intense, pie-filling quality, while the limes likewise have a pastry taste, like the Key lime pies I used to bring home with me when my parents lived in Florida.”

Among Steve’s favorites is Alma Rosa’s 2008 Chardonnay Santa Barbara County, an Editor’s Choice in Wine Enthusiast. And at an SRP of $19.99, it’s a great value, too.

Steve Heimoff of Wine Enthusiast recently spent a morning tasting and chatting with our very own Richard Sanford at Alma Rosa. Richard is America’s Pinot pioneer, the first to plant vineyards in the Santa Rita Hills, way back in 1970, but his passion doesn’t stop at Noir. As Steve points out, Alma Rosa has been quietly making some of the best Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris on the Central Coast.

“Richard Sanford and I spent the morning tasting and talking about the Santa Rita Hills and his fabled career. Lest you know him only for his Alma Rosa Pinot Noirs, particularly from his La Encantada Vineyard, his twin white Pinots — Gris and Blanc — with their natural crispness — are worthy of your attention. The latter is rich, the former sleek as a Brancusi swirl of steel.”

Steve’s full post is here.