Lately, I’ve been spending some time in Wine Country, traveling the backroads and appreciating the simple beauty of the vines. I’ve avoided big-name places and trite tasting rooms that look like the winery wants to apologize about the fact it isn’t located in France or Italy.
The truth is, the winery hopping wasn’t even my idea. The folks at the top of the magazine’s masthead asked me to do this column on wine in keeping with the Special Wine Issue. And they wanted me to focus my efforts in my backyard of Marin County.
I can hear the groans and the whining already: “Marin isn’t part of Wine Country. Marin doesn’t have wineries, it has open space and hot tubs and overpriced housing.”
And all of that is true, except for the part about the wineries. Marin has wineries. Think of Pacheco Ranch in Novato, Pey-Marin Vineyards in West Marin, not to mention the almost fanatical following developed by Sean Thackery, the most literate of winemakers. Admittedly Marin’s wine credentials are more quirky than its neighbors to the north. For instance, we have tasting rooms like Windsor Vineyards in Tiburon and Real Napa in Sausalito. We have offices for the likes of Valentine Vineyards, a vineyard in Mendocino, as well as conglomerate Brown-Foreman Wines. Glance at the exhaustive wine list at the Buckeye Roadhouse in Mill Valley or pay a visit to Rick’s Wine Cellar in Corte Madera, and you know that Marinites are serious about their love for the grape. Even the venerable wine publication Wines & Vines, 91 years young, calls San Rafael home.
Did you know grapes were planted at Mission San Rafael in 1817, more than two decades before they found their way to Napa?
So to all who look at Marin as the Wine Country stepchild, all I can say is, “Stick a cork in it.” What, you think Sonoma and Napa have the market cornered on terroir and micro-climates?
More wine?
So let’s start out on McEvoy Ranch, west of Petaluma, with its 550 fertile acres of soil that now produce world-class olive oil. Nan Tucker McEvoy, whose family founded the San Francisco Chronicle when it was the Voice of the West, imported olive trees from Tuscany when everybody told her the trees had as much chance as the San Francisco Giants. She’s also begun an organic beauty business. And now the County of Marin has given its seal of approval for McEvoy to convert a 4,700-square-foot maintenance building into a winemaking facility.
McEvoy, who was among the founders of the Peace Corps, already has land in production, with eight acres of grapes. About half the land holds mature Pinot Noir vines, while the rest are a mix of different varietals. McEvoy staffers say they intend to harvest the grapes on hand, but also may bring in grapes from other areas. Given the success of Pey-Marin and Devil’s Gulch Ranch, it’s easy to imagine a high-quality Pinot Noir coming out of the new McEvoy facility. And given McEvoy’s dedication to organics (the olive oil and her beauty products are all organic), it’s a foregone conclusion that the new vintages will celebrate the green way.
The new wine facility will be capable of producing 2,800 cases a year, and indications from ranch officials is that a blend of some sort would also be produced alongside the Pinot Noir.
Less wine?
The Ross Valley Winery, a combination tasting room, art gallery, wine shop and working winery, all smack-dab in the middle of downtown San Anselmo, closed this summer, leaving a hole not only in the Marin wine scene but also in the collection of characters that make up Marin.
A victim of the bum economy, 64-year-old Paul Kreider had to shutter his 1,500-case winery in June. Kreider began making wine in his garage in 1987, eventually taking the downtown space. So dedicated to his craft was Krieder that he sold his house to start the San Anselmo Avenue operation.
Kreider produced a port that was well known locally, in addition to traditional varietals such as Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. Customers were sometimes greeted by creative pricing for his wines. At one point, the winery offered its Recession Red at 0.1 percent of the Dow Jones industrial Average.
In the end, Kreider tried to sell his winery, but found no takers. In a post on the winery’s website, Kreider lamented, “I think it boils down to the fact that there’s a lot of pretty innocuous wines for sale at $6, which seems most important to people right now, and I understand that.”
More departures
Starry Night Winery, a 12,000-case winery that called a Novato warehouse home, moved to Carneros Vintners after a rent dispute with its landlord ended badly. Best known for its Zinfandel vintages (currently numbering a half-dozen, including offerings from Alexander Valley and Lodi), Starry Night hopes to return to Marin at some point. Its move to Sonoma County also meant other Marin winemakers had to move their operations, since they were sharing space in Novato. Kendric Vineyards, which makes a nice Pinot Noir from Marin County grapes (it also does a tasty Syrah produced from Shenandoah Valley fruit) moved to Carneros as well.
Trek Wine, which scored a victory over giant Wisconsin-based Trek Bicycles last spring in a trademark infringement case (the bike company claimed shipments of wine into Wisconsin as well as bike tours of Napa confused consumers) also made its home in the Starry Night warehouse in Novato. But rather than bolt for Carneros, the folks at Trek plan to open a winery in a remodeled Novato Victorian should they get an OK from city planning officials.
Bill Meagher is contributing editor of NorthBay biz. You can reach him at bill@northbaybiz.com with news tips, legal threats, wine recommendations or complaints about the supremely frustrating San Francisco Giants.
