| WINE HOW CUPERTINO BECAME A CABERNET DESTINATION.
It is “the most hallowed ground in California,” according to Ian Brand of I. Brand & Family Wines.
Its terroir “is some of the most outstanding” in the state, in the words of Duncan Arnot Meyers of Arnot-Roberts.
Brand and Meyers are talking about vineyards on Montebello Road in Cupertino, where both winemakers buy Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. They both stumbled upon a rare opportunity — the fruit grown here is only scarcely available to outside producers, and it’s some of the most pedigreed in the United States.
This small sector of vineyards, on a mountain overlooking Silicon Valley, is known widely for Ridge Vineyards’ iconic Monte Bello Vineyard. Ridge, according to the “Oxford Companion to Wine,” is “the most internationally admired producer of American Cabernet Sauvignon,” an impressive epithet for a wine that lacks the marketing advantages of a recognizable region — say, Napa Valley — on the label. Instead, Monte Bello and its neighbors lie in the vast Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, a sparsely planted appellation spanning three counties (San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz) from Half Moon Bay to Watsonville.
Ridge’s name has become synonymous with this corner of the Santa Cruz Mountains, maybe even the entire AVA. Ridge even has the name “Monte Bello” trademarked. But what most wine drinkers don’t know is that Ridge is not the only property producing beautiful wines on Montebello Road. In fact, the viticultural traditions of this rugged mountainside extend nearly 150 years into the past, and the narratives of the Montebello Road neighbors — names like Picchetti, Fellom, Naumann and Vidovich — are deeply intertwined with Ridge’s.
What makes the land on Montebello Road so attractive for wine growing? Its climate is cooler than Napa’s, which enables the area to produce Cabernet Sauvignons of greater elegance and structure. Meyers, who grew up in Napa, says he turned to the Santa Cruz Mountains after he “realized that some of our favorite Cabernet wines were coming from cooler places.”
Conditions on the mountain are tough. “You’re battling nature all the time,” says Roy Fellom, who cultivates a 10-acre vineyard adjacent to Ridge. Eighty mile-per-hour winds blowing from the Pacific, coupled with a large diurnal temperature swing, cause vines to struggle, which may make for difficult farming but ultimately concentrate the fruit.
The area’s greatest asset, however, lies beneath the ground. Vineyards on Montebello Road grow atop the North American plate, although the San Andreas Fault line appears visibly within reach. Longtime Ridge winemaker Paul Draper explains that, amid the tectonic activity, seawater mixed with gasses from the earth’s core to form limestone, the most coveted soil type for wine. “With limestone, mountain fruit is more elegant and precise,” adds Brand.
Yet because Ridge holds the trademark for the Monte Bello name, many wines made in this exceptional terroir do not identify the place on their label. (Wineries can legally use the phrase as part of a geographical indication: Fellom Ranch’s Cabernet names “Montebello Ridge,” while I. Brand and Vidovich Vineyards call theirs “Monte Bello Road.”)
The oldest vines on Montebello Road — a 0.7-acre patch of head-trained Zinfandel — date back at least 135 years. They were planted by Vincenzo Picchetti, who emigrated from Italy in 1872. After making wine at the Villa Maria for Jesuits for a decade, he and his brother purchased a 160-acre property on Montebello Road. By 1882 they were growing grapes, and by 1896 building a winery of their own.
Ridge Vineyards’ story began in that time period, when Osea Perrone purchased a 180-acre property higher up the mountainside in 1885. He vinified the first wine to be labeled Monte Bello in 1892. By 1890, another newcomer, John Torre, had arrived. He bought 100 acres, planted a vineyard and made his own wine, too.
With Prohibition, both Torre’s and Perrone’s vineyards were abandoned. So was the Picchetti property, almost: Vincenzo’s descendants uprooted their vines, save for the 0.7 acres of Zinfandel remaining today, which was spared to produce sacramental wine. They replanted the property to orchard fruits.
After repeal, the Picchettis struggled to profit from their estate. They ceased commercial winemaking, and in 1976 they sold the remainder of their land to the government-run Midpeninsula Open Space District, which maintains ownership today.
Meanwhile, William Short purchased the old Torre winery and, in 1949, planted Cabernet Sauvignon for the first time on this mountain. A decade
later, Short’s property sold to four Stanford scientists — Dave Bennion, Hew Crane, Charlie Rosen and Howard Ziedler. They rechristened the winery as Ridge Vineyards in 1962, vinifying the first modern vintage of Monte Bello. Paul Draper, the winemaker who would come to define Ridge, joined the winery in 1969, and held that position until his retirement in 2016. (He remains chairman.)
For a time, Ridge was the only operating winery on Montebello Road. It got some company in 1980, when Roy Fellom planted Bordeaux varieties on his family estate, which looks onto Perrone. “When we started,” Fellom explains, “it was Picchetti, me and Ridge.”
The Picchetti property was growing grapes then, but its wine label would not be revived until 1998, when Leslie Pantling signed a long-term lease with the Open Space District to take control of the vineyards and old winery. (Before her, Sunrise Winery had leased the land.) Since then, the winery count on Montebello Road has doubled, as the small growers Naumann, Vidovich and R & W have all launched their own labels.
With six producers in place, and highprofile clients like I. Brand and Arnot-Roberts purchasing fruit from several of them, will these Montebello Road wineries surrounding Ridge continue to grow in quality and recognition, and will others join them?
The greatest challenge: “There isn’t a lot of room for other people up there,” says Brand. Ridge has expanded its Monte Bello Vineyard gradually over the last half century, acquiring the Perrone property in 1968, the Jimsomare Vineyard in the 1990s and the Rousten Ranch — in between those two sites — in 2007.
Today, “there’s not a lot of land to be developed,” says Don Naumann, who grows 2.5 acres of Merlot on the mountain. And “there’s a lot of push (not to develop) around from the Open Space.” Ridge plans to slowly replant the old abandoned portions of the Perrone section of the vineyard, an additional 40 acres, over the coming years, and Fellom also has plans for growth. Beyond them, the remaining Montebello Road growers are left to the small acreages they currently farm.
That limited supply of grapes means that these wineries primarily vinify in small lots. For them, wholesale distribution is not viable, and several, such as Picchetti, have come to rely on direct-to-consumer sales. While such a business structure can increase a winery’s profit margin per bottle, it can also inhibit more widespread brand recognition — and regional recognition. In other words, these hidden gems may well stay hidden.
And the close-knit Montebello Road community seems content to stay small. Naumann recalls Paul Draper’s daughter babysitting his daughter. Draper used to bottle an old-vine Picchetti Zinfandel before the Open Space District arrived. Once Pantling signed the lease on that same property, she hired a former Ridge assistant winemaker to help her modernize Picchetti’s old production facility and make the wines. And when Vidovich Vineyards was getting ready to develop its own Montebello Road property to vine, it consulted with Ridge on rootstock selections and pruning practices.
Despite Montebello Road’s collaborative spirit, it doesn’t look likely that a formal organization will ever take shape. The thought has crossed the minds of a few of the smaller producers, though. They all hope to further define this special corner of the broadly drawn Santa Cruz Mountains AVA.
“I see this area growing and becoming more and more recognized,” says Roy Fellom. While the land may never expand significantly, the bottlings from the area are more diverse than ever. With each vintner working this fruit, bringing a new perspective and style, the wines produced from Montebello Road vineyards continue to reveal the essence of this magnificent place.