The car, ill-suited to a washed out dirt road, struggled through running streams, threaded its way between rockslides and over ravine-like ruts on its way to sure ruin. At any moment, the climb to the top of the mountain would come to a premature end, I felt sure of it in all my bones, especially the ones in my ass.
Luckily, winemaker Ian Brand hails from Connecticut where winter driving is learned early. plus His stints tracking endangered species in the Forest and Park services engrained in him a sense of finesse for handling crappy roads. He says that being the youngest of the Park crowd that hung with the likes of Ed Abbey, he’d get handed the keys to drive them all home, completely shit-faced, over nasty mountain terrain.
Sure enough, we didn’t quite make it to the top: the beast was bested by thick mud, where a bit of clay clumped into the granitic soils to create glue. We jumped out and hiked through the steep, low-trellised vineyards on our way to the payoff: a sweeping, birds of prey view of the entire Salinas Valley. 2200 feet below us, shimmering to the west, lay the Santa Lucia Highlands bench, gleaming green in the noon sun. The air was as pure as light and the breezes tickled the new vine shoots with a tease of marine coolness as the fog melted in the sunshine. Everywhere I looked, I saw a healthy ecosystem, teaming with ladybugs, clover, chamomile, mushrooms, white, pink and gold wildflowers and choruses of poppies. Nature is a happy young girl here. She’s still in harmony with man’s minimal impact: they don’t need to spray much for mildew, because they rarely get fog, and there’s no disease pressure, as there are no other vineyards in the vicinity. The biggest worries are coyotes and mountain lions going after the sheep and goats whose job is weed control and leaf thinning. And yellow jackets when the grapes to start to ripen.
The 38-acre Coastview Vineyard is the nosebleed kind to farm. But it’s worth it. Rhones thrive here. Chardonnay is exceptional, exuding a hefty, almost gritty minerality and an unrelenting acid core rarely found outside of France or the Santa Cruz Mountains, Here, Syrah takes on the raucous cured meatiness of French salame and the spicy-herbiness of a saucisson cassoulet. I can’t wait to see how the Viognier they are grafting over to performs here. Ian hopes to get some Grenache Blanc and a smattering of Roussanne in as well. Vineyard maestro and property manager, Tony, has already begun grafting some of the underperforming Syrah to Riesling: a wise move. There’s even a top block of Bordeaux varietals at the crest of the ridge: they struggle mightily to achieve ripeness, giving the Thanksgiving harvest fruit something of an herbaceous crust that almost has a crunch to it.
Initially planted to Syrah and Chardonnay back in 1997 at the suggestion of Doug Meador, Coastview now has 14 acres of Syrah (some of which is being grafted to Riesling, as well as to Rhone whites), 7 of Chardonnay, two of Bordeaux, and one each of Pinot and Grenache. Ian says they are tailoring everything to the site, attempting to create a distinctive sense of place that runs through every Coastview wine. He points to Mt. Harlan (Calera), Mt. Eden (Santa Cruz Mountains) and Peay (Sonoma Coast) as examples of sites that exhibit an undeniable imprimatur of place. I can’t wait to taste Coastview wines from Cima Collina, De Tierra and Thacher, all of whom buy Coastview fruit.
One of the reasons I jumped at the chance to make this trek was barrel-tasting Big Basin’s 2008 Coastview Syrah: it literally exploded my sinuses with its intense, peppery divinity. My first taste of Coastview was Tony Craig’s Savannah-Chanelle 2004 Syrah, and, wow! It made an impression that never faded: he told me about this high in the sky vineyard with a teetering dirt road that put the fear of God into every truck driver at harvest. But altitude develops attitude, and in Ian’s case, fortitude. It helps to have a strong hide to work this site.
Up here, the sun is punishingly strong. As we sipped the elegantly persistent, mile long finish 2008 Coastview Chardonnay and enjoyed a spread of salami, cheeses and homemade Skordalia (Ian is of Greek descent), the rays shining through the water in my wineglass started a fire on the black vinyl tabletop. It was doing the same thing to my skin. We posited that the Chardonnay was so viscous and rich that the sun’s rays were being absorbed by it, preventing those glasses from causing similar conflagration. That wine will burn a spot in your brain, though: from the Terraces block, this is a riveting native yeast monster with flavors of Anjou pears, tangerine zest, lemon curd, chamomile and sel gris. Like a cat that won’t leave your lap, this one won’t leave your mouth.
Watching the Baby Doll sheep cavorting on a nearby hillside, I wondered if the black ones were sweating with their wool coats on. By mid-summer, they will be called upon to leaf trim in the vineyard, saving a labor pass, and fattening them up nicely for an autumnal feast. On the opposite hillside, into which a steeply terraced Pinot Vineyard has been planted at the behest of Bradley Brown of Big Basin Vineyards, goats milled about, devouring the spring grasses and wildflowers, which seemed to be giving at least one of them a case of flatulence. I’ve never heard a goat fart before. And I’ve never set a table on fire with a glass of water. And I’ve never seen a more artistically terraced, precariously perched vineyard where vines bask in the purest sun, drinking deeply from artesian wells and spinning tales of Eden into fruit that will one day become legendary wine.
If you’d like to acquire some Coastview wines for your drinking pleasure, contact Ian at coas...@gmail.com
