San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Wine maverick has beliefs that you can taste
Winemaker Jim Clendenen has just finished cooking lunch for his staff at Au Bon Climat winery near Santa Maria. It’s a daily ritual, and he brings out a big pot of chile verde with thick chunks of pork and a pan of nicely crusted mac and cheese prepared with Oaxacan and cotija cheeses and Mexican cream.
The staff drifts into the cavernous space, where 16 bottles of wine are lined up on a pair of rustic tables. Along with the employees, Rhone specialist Bob Lindquist (his Qupé winery shares the 40,000-squarefoot facility) and former California Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, who drove over from his Runway Vineyards just down the road, settle in with plates of food.
Then it’s on, as the tastings and talk of politics and sports last for nearly three hours.
The idea for the lunch dates back to Clendenen’s time working at wineries in France. While attending UC Santa Barbara in the early 1970s, he spent his junior year abroad. Clendenen lived in a camper with his girlfriend as they visited 18 countries. And in an era when the likes of Annie Green Springs defined wine for many Americans, he transitioned from Boone’s Farm to Bordeaux Superieur — at 40 cents a bottle.
“It was a life-changing experience,” says Clendenen. “I came back and joined the Santa Barbara County Wine Society. I had nothing to bring to them, but they had a lot to bring to me. I just became more and more involved with wine, so when I graduated, instead of going to law school, I went back to France in ’77. And instead of spending time in Bordeaux, I went to Burgundy and Champagne.”
In 1982, Clendenen founded Au Bon Climat with his friend Adam Tolmach, now the owner and winemaker of the Ojai Vineyard. The pair rented 800 square feet in a dairy barn and, without any employees, took on everything from picking grapes to bottling.
The modern era of winemaking in Santa Barbara County had started less than a decade earlier, and Clendenen and Tolmach qualified as pioneers. Unlike the local winemakers who adopted approaches from Northern California, Au Bon Climat embraced a European model.
“If you didn’t come in with that orientation, if you came in thinking, ‘I really like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from Sonoma and Carneros,’ then you couldn’t make wine like we took the risk to make here, involving stem inclusion and all of the things that we learned about from Europe.”
Success came quickly for the Akron, Ohio, native, the grandson of two coal miners and whose father worked as a mid-level executive at Firestone Tire and Rubber Co.: In 1989, Robert M. Parker Jr. named Au Bon Climat one of the world’s top 10 wineries.
Clendenen says his approach has never wavered. “I’m not going to change. Not because I can’t change, but because I believe in what I’m doing. And I believe that what I’m doing is getting better every year.”
Santa Barbara County wine scene
As far back as the late 1980s, Clendenen says, insiders
recognized that Santa Barbara County was the country’s best place to grow Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. But he says it was only during the past decade or so that the region truly came into its own as more winemakers moved away from what he describes as high-alcohol “California plush, validatedby-critics styles” that ignored the area’s natural weather and growing conditions. Among the county winemakers he cites are Rajat Parr at Sandhi, Gavin Chanin at Chanin Wine Co. and Lutum Wines, Justin Willett at Tyler Winery, and Paul Lato at Paul Lato Wines. Three of these (Sandhi, Lutum and Tyler) are open by appointment in the Lompoc Wine Ghetto, the collection of small-production wineries clustered in an industrial park on the edge of the county’s Sta. Rita Hills AVA. In Lompoc, Clendenen also recommends Brewer-Clifton, Longoria Wines and Palmina Wines.
In Santa Barbara
Au Bon Climat’s tasting room is in downtown Santa Barbara at the Wine Collection of El Paseo, where you’ll also find five other premium wineries. The collection is along the Santa Barbara Urban Wine Trail, which includes nearly 30 tasting rooms downtown and in the Funk Zone. Clendenen isn’t a big fan of aspects of the Funk Zone wine scene (“I don’t know if anyone really makes money selling glasses of wine to drunk people”), but he does admire Les Marchands Wine Bar & Merchant. “There’s no better wine program in Los Angeles than what they have at Les Marchands,” he says.
Saturday ritual
Clendenen drives to downtown Santa Barbara for the Saturday morning farmers’ market. “It’s amazing how seasonal all of it is. We have our own organic vegetable garden, but they’ll have full heads of Romanesco cauliflower when I’ve got nothing. Tom Shepherd at Shepherd Farms is probably the guy who invented mesclun lettuce in all of California.” Clendenen tries to arrive at the market by 10 and leave early enough to get in line at landmark La Super-Rica Taqueria before 11:30 to avoid the crowds. “It’s absolutely some of the best grilled Mexican food that you’ll find anywhere.”
At home in Buellton
Clendenen lives in Buellton, where he likes Industrial Eats, a casual spot and popular wine industry hangout in a onetime warehouse, as well as the Hitching Post II, the famous steak destination. “It’s the mandatory dining experience for the area, and I probably eat there 10 times more than I should,” he says. “That’s because everybody I know who comes into town wants to eat there.”
Los Alamos rising
At one point, Clendenen