Saturday morning we woke up in the Holiday Inn Express in the tourist trap dutch town of Solvang, CA. Our five hour drive, with an hour intermission for dinner at Mcphee's Grill, had left us with some sort of a hangover although not the alcohol kind. The proper medication for something like this usually involves a big fat coffee but we were running late eager to get to our appointment at La Encantada Vineyard with vineyard manager Kerry Martin. (and we're also coffee snobs so we passed on the Holiday Inn Express breakfast bar)
La Encantada is one of those vineyards that just feels special. It is nestled towards the Western end of the Santa Rita Hills and there is a rugged beauty to the landscape. Owned by Richard Sanford, who is unquestionably one of the pioneers in modern California winemaking, it is planted to 98% pinot noir and 1% each of pinot gris and pinot blanc. La Encantada is certified organic and probably goes even a few steps beyond. For example, Richard has refused to put up deer fences out of respect for the natural habitat and ecosystem.
Sanford also is hosting some students from UC Santa Cruz doing reserach on peregrine falcons. The students have set up camp under an oak tree in the vineyard and the falcons were presumably camped out in their hut on top of a tall hill. The falcons, in addition to being the objects of study to lucky ucsc students, are great hunters of gophers. Gophers must be a big problem as there are also many barn owl houses on the property.
One of my tasks was to shoot video, which I will post later, and the other was to get cluster samples. I seriosuly underestimated how long it would take to get these samples. Crushpad sources from 5 different blocks on the property and one of those blocks is big enough to warrant seperate vineyard samples from each the North and South ends. When you are taking cluster samples you basically want to divide each block into about six different sections (depending on the block size) and combine clusters from each section into one bag. This should give you a representative sampling of the block. Some rows were probably 3-400 meters in length so walking the entire row and back took some time. Not a bad way to spend a morning though : )
The benefit of it taking a couple of hours to get the samples was that I was able to witness the signature climactic conditions of Santa Rita Hills; foggy mornings that give way to warm, but not exceedingly hot afternoons, accompanied by nice ocean breezes. The temperature must have changed a good 15 degrees in a thirty minute span.
The fruit from La Encantada was dark purple with a sort brambly intensity although still a few weeks away from harvest. Or as Kerry put it,"I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say LE is indeed a magical spiritual place and that translates into earthy untamed wild berry flavors in the grapes which are gonna rock this year!"
Well said.
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