San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
From apricot orchards to AVA status
How this slice of Central Valley became an official wine region
For an up-and-coming wine region, earning official American Viticultural Area (AVA) status is a long slog in the best of times.
Vintners have to prove their soils, microclimates and other features produce distinct wines. And they have to navigate the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).
Corinne Martinez, coowner, president and COO of Berryessa Gap Vineyards, had a compelling argument close at hand in her years-long application process to gain recognition for a Winters-based sliver of western Yolo County: the climate-defining gap in the Vaca Mountains that gave her family’s winery its name. After a confusing rotation of doorkeepers at the bureau, a welcome infusion of hard science at the winery and a final boost from a couple of politicians, Winters Highlands was approved in August.
The rich agricultural area around Winters — known widely for apricot, prune, walnut and almond orchards — is generally associated with Central Valley heat. But Martinez says that’s not the whole story. Growing up in one of the prominent ranching families in the area, she recalls, they started and ended their summer days in jackets.
In her quest to establish wine-growing bona fides for the strip of vineyard land stretched over the folded hills at the eastern base of the Vaca Range, she sought proof. Tian Tian, a local researcher, collected technical data on the region’s distinguishing climate and soil types compared to those in already established AVAs nearby.
Yes, the area shares midday heat with the valley; it’s generally 5 to 10 degrees warmer than Napa Valley during the growing season. But it cools quickly in the late afternoon, with day-tonight (diurnal) temperature swings of 30 degrees and more, which is larger than in Napa.
The benefactor is a large and highly visible gap in the range, where Putah Creek flows through. Cool air pools over the large body of water that is Lake Berryessa and flows east through the gap. The AVA boundaries, according to Martinez, were drawn around the spread of those cooling breezes.
Chris Turkovich, founder and proprietor of prominent producer Turkovich Family Wines, adds that while winters are cold and wet here, temperatures warm up early in the spring. Bud break is a full two weeks earlier than in Napa, just over the hills.
Not only is that a boon for apricots, it launches a long growing season for grapes. The warm days induce fully ripe fruit flavors and velvety mature tannins, while the nights, cooled by gap airflow plus breezes off the Sacramento Delta, keep acidity levels high (the AVA dips south into Solano County, closer to the waterways). The result is wines — both red and white — with an enviable balance of generous ripe fruit and fresh, juicy acidity.
The varieties that especially thrive here, according to Turkovich, are Rhône reds — Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre and Petite Sirah — and the Spanish grapes Tempranillo and Albariño. That last — a new-darling white — is a hot commodity in the downtown Turkovich tasting room, selling out ahead of demand every year.
Earning AVA status is no small thing, said Turkovich: “There are grapes grown all over the place. But this cements you, especially among more educated wine drinkers. You’re taken a little more seriously.”
Berryessa Gap Vineyards winemaker Nicole Salengo Lee, who has worked with Winters fruit for 20 years, explains that Putah Creek’s alluvial fan, the area of the bench its deposits have covered through the years, has created exceptional soils for grape-growing.
The crib notes for those soils describe thin, welldraining gravelly loam over clay. But with the passion of a geologist, Salengo Lee paints an ancient backdrop for this confluence of the “Great Valley,” as she puts it, with the Coastal Range.
The geological upheaval of converging plates, and the “mountain-building” it caused, pushed rock formations to the surface — ancient igneous and metamorphic rock mixing now with more recent sedimentary deposits. “I believe they add a savory minerality to the flavors of wines made from grapes grown in these soils,” Salengo Lee said.
And the plate activity continues, bringing new material to the surface. “I like thinking that ‘fresh’ rocks at the active continental margin will break down into new soil — pretty cool,” she said.
Salengo Lee feels a keen sense of responsibility with the recognition for the emerging region. “It’s on us to make varietally correct wines,” she said, “to show that the AVA can do it.”
Winters itself, still a hub of orchards and fruit-packing plants, might have been a set design for a cool new (old) wine town. In 1875, Theodore Winters, a leading landholder, helped facilitate bringing the railroad through and got himself a town.
Today, as in many small Wine Country burgs, historic storefronts house more excellent restaurants than the number of residents warrants. Preserve, for example, incorporates bounty from surrounding farms into creative California comfort food.
Older standbys deliver too, like local favorite Putah Creek Cafe with its homemade pies and locals crowded in for lunch. And the Buckhorn Steakhouse housed in an old hotel where “Joe the Butcher” (that would be Joe Bristow) supplies memorable “sirloin experiences.”
Two of the downtown storefronts make Winters a great place to taste wine now. In a modern remodel against weathered brick walls, Berryessa Gap pours its wide range of wines into the evening (with Spanishstyle tapas; Martinez’s father’s family is from Spain). Turkovich’s tasting room — with more of an old-time general store vibe — is also open into the evening.
As Martinez describes it, in late 2020, their application to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax bureau was “perfected” — meaning everything was deemed in order. But then she waited.
A chance encounter with U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson — whose district includes Napa and Lake counties and parts of Sonoma, Solano and Yolo counties — apparently moved the needle. “Write to my office,” he said.
Thompson linked up with Rep. John Garamendi, whose purview also includes parts of Solano County, and it wasn’t long before Winters Highlands moved into the mandatory comment period, then final review. Bottles from 2023 will be the first to note the AVA on their labels.
Berryessa Gap Vineyards downtown tasting room: 15 Main St., Winters. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Tuesday; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Wednesday–Saturday. https:// www.berryessagap.com/Visit/DowntownTastingRoom
Turkovich Family Wines downtown tasting room: 304 Railroad Ave., Winters. 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday-Wednesday; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. https://turkovichwines.com/ winery/
“It’s on us to make varietally correct wines to show that the AVA can do it.” Berryessa Gap Vineyards winemaker Nicole Salengo Lee