Retracing California's roots

by Tim Grubb for westcoastwine.net  

On the western edge of Santa Barbara County near Lompoc, most vintners are basking in the new found (and well deserved) attention this area has received lately as one of the most promising Pinot Noir regions in the world.  These vintners are defying old-world ideals of how certain wines should look and taste and have planted all the new clones in vineyards that were nothing but row crops and horse farms just a few years ago.  In the midst of this reborn landscape, one woman is doing her best to trace California’s winemaking roots back to the days of the Spanish Missions. 

When Deborah Hall purchased her property in 1994 in the heart of what would become the Santa Rita Hills AVA she had no intention of growing wine grapes and had no idea that she was about to uncover the oldest vineyard in Santa Barbara County.  As she began to clear the scrub brush away from a beautiful south facing hillside on her property she slowly uncovered grape vines that hadn’t been touched by human hands in decades.  When the clearing was finally done, Deborah’s scraggly hillside turned out to be an ancient vineyard that would soon retake its old shape.

Once Deborah knew that her hillside was actually a vineyard, and not just sprawling tumble weed, she began the slow process of trying to find out exactly what she had discovered.  First, Deborah was quite curious about how these gnarled old vines were so she began asking neighbors and reading up on local history.  Deborah's search didn’t take her too far as the key laid just down the road with Audry Machado, the matriarch of a family whose Portuguese ancestors once owned most of the surrounding valley and who was now well into her 80's.  When asked about the vines, Mrs. Machado kindly explained that the vineyard was alive and well when she was a child and as far back as she could remember.  Mrs. Machado’s memory squared up with county records of Deborah’s house, which dates back to the late 1800’s (and curiously has an underground wine-cellar).  Deborah did a little more research and finally put all of the puzzle pieces together to estimate that her vineyard was planted in 1887 - about eight decades before this area's marquee vineyard was planted by pioneer Richard Sanford.  

The first vineyard manager Deborah contacted told her that whoever originally planted the vineyard knew what they were doing but that the vines were now too old to produce grapes that could be used for wine.  Despite the uncertainty, Deborah is a "gardener at heart" and wanted to see if her hillside garden could be nursed back to health.  Embracing this gamble, Deborah and her vineyard crew started down the tedious path of reviving the vineyard and figuring out exactly what type of grape they had committed to.

Most of the local experts who visited Deborah told her she surely had a nice little zinfandel vineyard on her hands.  After a few years of nursing the vines back to health and trellising them a bit, a local vintner even signed up to buy the first available crop in an attempt to make a few barrels of old-vine zinfandel.  While Deborah had no reason to doubt conventional wisdom, she wanted confirmation so she sent a tissue sample to the wizards up at U.C. Davis.  Shortly before harvest they confirmed that these grapes were not zinfandel, but were Mission grapes - a varietals first planted in the area by the padres who settled the La Purisima mission just a few miles away.  With confirmation that the grapes were not zinfandel as originally thought, Deborah's first buyer backed out a few weeks before harvest and she found herself with a crop of ancient grapes but no idea about what to do with them.

Reviving an Ancient Recipe

With harvest rapidly approaching, Deborah began doing some last minute research to figure out whether her Mission grapes could even be made into wine.  While there wasn't much of a history of Mission grapes being made into table wine, Deborah discovered that vintners of old had great success with a desert wine called "Angelica".  Deborah now knew she had the raw materials to make her own version of Angelica, but scoured the Central Coast for someone who knew how to make it and was coming up empty.  Just in the knick time, Deborah got in touch with John Alexander-Hill at Central Coast Wine Services, who had made Angelica in the past and was more than willing to give it another try with this historical crop.  While John had worked with Mission grapes before, he and Deborah decided that their best bet was to stick to the original recipe for Angelica first recorded by Emile Vache in 1891.  Deborah stumbled across a picture of Emile Vache's original winemaking manuscript in an old book on California wine and figured that there was no reason to change a recipe that had been used by winemakers for more than a century. 

Based on a little help from this old recipe, John and Deborah crafted a wonderful dessert wine that will leave a lasting impression on any wine enthusiast.  This inaugural release of Angelica is not one of the flabby grape jelly - meets - molasses dessert wines often seen in California, but rather is a more elegant wine that captures you with its deep golden color and a nose that blends hazelnuts, toffee, and aromas reminiscent of a fine cognac.  This dessert wine is certainly a step apart from its modern day counterparts, and Deborah wouldn't have it any other way.

Deborah's vineyard dates back to a time when most everything was handmade and she has let that era "set the tone" for the rest of the winemaking process.  The wine is handcrafted every step of the way and then bottled in hand-blown recycled glass made in a shape that dates back to times long gone.

Deborah's commitment to crafting this wine with old-world techniques even extends to labels of handmade paper and sealing wax donated from a bee colony on her property.  All of this attention to detail from the vineyard to the bottle has paid off for Deborah and her Gypsy Canyon Winery, as her wine is both historically significant and a treat in the glass.  Deborah's commitment to her ancient wine can also seen in her new block of Mission grapes that was propagated from cuttings of the original mother vines.  

While Deborah isn't sure what type of wine will be made from this next generation, the past few years have taken her on a journey that gives us all a glimpse into California's winemaking heritage.