inemaking in the Santa Cruz Mountains has always included Chardonnay, Cabernet and Pinot Noir. Much has been written about Ridge Vineyards and Cabernet, but it is truly Pinot Noir that has captured the hearts and imaginations of all who toil in the steep, gnarly vineyards set among wild, redwood-covered mountains that make an uneasy peace with the sea below. Like a vaguely glimpsed muse of inspiration, Pinot Noir has rendered otherwise sane individuals completely mad with the obsession of her. It is the stuff of legend here in these majestic, mostly untamed hills, where redwood and poison oak rule.

Pinot obsession here began with the famous cuttings from Burgundy that made their way into Paul Masson’s Saratoga vineyards, which were later taken over by the famous Martin Ray, who also brought some of his own cuttings to plant at the site of modern day Mount Eden. It was Martin Ray who inspired young David Bruce to commit his life to making the best Pinot in the world, and Martin Ray who left a legacy that Jeffrey Patterson carries on to this day, although his hand has been firmly on the rudder of the good ship Mount Eden ever since 1983.

Any wine lover who has lived here for more than 20 years and hasn’t partaken of the old world style, age-worthy Pinots that come from Ken Burnap and Jeff Emery in the heart of the Vine Hill district should be shot. Or they should go visit Jeff at his new tasting room in Santa Cruz and find out what they’ve been missing. Other long-term Pinot-making legends include John Schumacher of Hallcrest Vineyards, who has some of the finest single vineyard examples in the appellation. He’s one of those truly purple Pinot people that are as passionate about Pinot as some are about politics, and he’s pretty passionate about that also.

Tony Craig, perhaps the best known Pinot maker here, learned his craft at David Bruce Winery, and then went on to revive Savannah-Chanelle, where he makes Pinot from many regions. He also crafts Pinot for Silver Mountain, Muns Vineyard and his own label, Sonnet Wine Cellars. He’s the master of extraction and color retention, and was one of the first to make a major switch to Hungarian oak.

In the Corralitos region, Jim Schultze has carved out quite a niche with his Windy Oaks brand, heralded for Burgundian style wines that really do dance on the tongue. Michael Martella at Fogarty turns out some spectacular Pinots when Mother Nature feels in a generous mood, and Sal Godinez, a relative newcomer to the Santa Cruz Mountains, will tell you he’d rather make Pinot from here than anywhere else he’s gotten fruit from. “When it’s perfect, you don’t have to add anything but yeast.” And according to Jeffrey Patterson, it’s so perfect he doesn’t even bother doing that.

Relative youngster Ryan Beauregard of Beauregard Vineyards has been making Pinot here for 9 years. He’s fortunate that his lineage is farming, and he had a full pantry of vineyards to choose from, both his own and others that his family was farming. His first vintage was 1999, during the peak of the dot.com bubble when people started planting vineyards like mad and spending upwards of $100 per bottle. He says he started making Pinot “because it grows here!” He credits Mitridat Faravashi from David Bruce Winery with imparting some Pinot wisdom. Ryan’s intent in making Pinot is “Not to make it too aggressive.” He tends to focus on minerality and acidity, and believes that what is common across the range of SCM Pinots is minerality and depth, and of course, he believes the Pinot fruit from his own Bald Mountain, in the Ben Lomond AVA, is the best.

Cinnabar’s alchemist winemaker George Troqauto is a genius and can make something drinkable out of just about anything. With Pinot, his style is ultra-bright fruit, divine texture with racing acidity: truly an ethereal expression of the grape. George told me: “We have been making Pinot Noir since 1997. The Santa Cruz Mountains are such a natural fit for the finicky grape, how could we not make it? Our first vintage was from the SCM and the amount was so little we hand de-stemmed it!

“My goal with Pinot is to have good color, delicate aromas, sensual mouth feel and good structure. The mountain Vineyards have more structure and minerals, the valley vineyards seem to be richer but not as complex. SCM Pinot has more earth and spice when compared to other appellations, which seem to have more up front fruit. SCM Pinot just seems to have a lot going on, more layer and depth, with less of the uni-dimensional fruit component.” George counts winemakers at Chalone, Testarossa, and David Bruce among those he has turned to for advice.

When he began making Pinot at Mount Eden in 1981, Jeffrey Patterson was introduced to the Pinot protocol established by Martin Ray decades earlier. The vines were planted on 10x10 spacing with no trellising. The gnarled trunks were tied to redwood stakes, as were the basket canes that Ray preferred over the head-pruned method with spurs, which was classic California in the 1940s. Basket canes held fruit at every level, from near the ground to chest high, making for very tricky field sampling. They were going for full ripeness, but this varied tremendously.

Jeffrey recalls that wine consultant Dick Graff thought that 20 to 25 percent dimpling (aka raisining) was acceptable. He also insisted on crushing the fruit, stems and all, into the fermenting bins. “The destemmer attachment was removed and the grapes went right through the rubber rollers,” recalls Patterson. “Dick felt this provided longevity and complexity to the wine. Frankly, I thought they were too stemmy and went away from that practice. Lately, though, I have come back to whole cluster fermentation.”

Back then, they used lots of new French oak, racked once per quarter with a pump (Jeffrey remarks that was before the Bulldog was invented), aged for 20 months and then egg-white fined before bottling. Today, Jeffrey no longer racks, does not fine or filter, and prefers ageing 15 months in 50 percent new French oak, with the remainder in one year old barrels. He dumps the just-picked grapes into fermenting tanks, turns on the chiller and lets them sit for a couple of days, after which the chiller goes off, and the native yeast fermentation kicks in.

Jeffrey says that Pinot is a hot and fast fermenter so he prefers not to add any yeast; it’s easier to control if the grapes do their own thing. Malolactic also happens naturally. It’s a pretty hands-off process. He adds no SO₂ before putting the wine in barrel. His mantra is to “make expressive, age-worthy wine, with alcohol levels below 14, and a pH as low as we can get it, ideally more like 3.3, although mine is usually more like 3.6 or 3.7. I feel my wines are more Burgundian in style than most. I want the wine to be explosive and sexy, not too dark, which is why I don’t go for heavy extraction. I feel less extraction yields more delicacy.” One look at a glass of Pinot from Mount Eden and you will see right through it. And the world on the other side looks mighty rosy indeed, especially if you can wait at least ten years.

Jeff Emery of Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard stunned the wine scene earlier this year when two of his Pinots won Gold at the San Francisco Chronicle Competition, with the 2005 Branciforte Creek taking Double Gold and the 2004 Bailey’s Branciforte Ridge taking Gold. He has been making Pinot for 33 years, yet these were the first he made from the “new clones,” that is the Dijons, having been forced to buy fruit after the old Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard site was sold to Wines of Vine Hill. The combination of approachable fruit from meticulously farmed vineyards plus the use of both French and Hungarian oak created a wonderful expression of Pinot that has put Jeff on a new path.

The Bargetto Winery has produced Pinot Noir since the 1970s, but Director of Winemaking John Bargetto notes that they re-started in earnest in 1985 with Carneros fruit. Says John, “In 1985, Andre Tchlistcheff was my consulting winemaker (heard of him?), and we worked very closely on that vintage wine. I told him I learned more making that wine than all the other wines put together.” The Santa Cruz Mountains present what he feels is the perfect, cool climate location. Speaking of their first estate wine, which was harvested in 1997, Bargetto comments, ”what a vintage to start with!” His primary goal in making Pinot is “to create a distinctive wine that represents our vineyard terroir, and capture the alluring Pinot Noir perfume in the nose along with elegant texture. Our Pommard clone is special from our vineyard, and now we have Mt Eden clones.” He feels that a common thread among SCM Pinots is a perfumey nose and alluring fruit. What sets SCM Pinot apart? Says John, “ Ours ages quite well.”

Michael Muccigrosso of Muccigrosso Vineyards got lucky when he met Jacob Kaufman; this young man has a way with Pinot. He’s been making award winning wines for 12 harvests now, four at David Bruce, eight at Muccigrosso. Asked what inspired him to make Pinot, Jake says, “The first time I really became enamored with Pinot when I was tasting a David Bruce 1994 Chalone Pinot in their tasting room; I was stapling boxes at the time. I guess that’s a ‘spring chicken’ answer. I could say ‘trying a ‘71' Richebourg! ‘While amazing, that didn't really open up my third eye. Maybe it was the context. Then basically having the opportunity to work with a milieu of vineyard designated Pinots produced in the late 90's at David Bruce with Ken Foster, Tony Craig, and Greg Stokes. What a great opportunity to learn.” Jacob particularly likes working with fruit from Dick Evan's Vineyard on the eastern side of Skyline Blvd, planted with the Mt. Eden clone. While others identify “mountain spice” as a character of SCM Pinot, for Jacob, it’s one in particular, and that is nutmeg.

Dave Moulton of Burrell School has been making Pinot since 1994. His most significant contribution to the SCM wine scene has been spearheading Pinot Paradise, the annual showcase of Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot Noir, which is held every year during the last weekend of March. Dave felt that this region needed a platform to celebrate the ideal growing conditions that these mountains provide. The two-day event invites Pinot lovers to visit the various area wineries to taste barrel samples and library wines on Saturday, March 28, and then to attend a Grand Cru tasting on Sunday, March 29, at Villa Ragusa in Campbell, where nearly every winery in the region that makes Pinot from appellation fruit will be in attendance.

Dave makes Pinot in a style reflective of his personality: big and bold. I believe it is the most distinctive of all the grapes we grow in the Santa Cruz Mountains. His first vintage of Pinot from the SCM was the 2000 Vista Del Mar Vineyard Corralitos region which comes with a very earthy character and plenty of legs. Dave’s mantra when making Pinot is to create a wine that is really well-structured and is very fruit forward. In addition to his estate fruit, grown in the warmer area of Summit Road, he says, “I have always liked the Veranda Vineyard Pinot Noir (Corralitos region), because of its very spicy character. The area enjoys a somewhat cooler climate than our own on the Summit.” That decidedly cooler climate really intensifies both the acidity and the bright fruits that are so charming in Pinot Noir.

Speaking of Corralitos, winemaker Jim Schultze of Windy Oaks is dedicated to Pinot Noir and knows it’s all about climate and clones. Says Jim, of his vineyard in Corralitos: “The clones we have make the case for terroir. We have seven different clones in our vineyard and they all produce similar clusters (small, tight clusters with relatively small grapes, although they basically receive similar vineyard management. On our site, block position tends to determine harvest time. We normally have five or six separate harvests extending over a month. Of the different clones, the 115 is the most versatile with excellent aromas and flavors, and the 2A tends to contribute to structure. The 667 and 777 clearly add to the flavor complexity. My favorite is the Pommard 5 which seems to contribute great mouthfeel and dark fruit flavors.”

Regarding the differences among subregions, Jim had this to say about Corralitos: “I think Corralitos has a much stronger ocean influence, with more consistent temperatures throughout the growing season. The growing season itself is very long (we have budbreak typically in February and harvest in October) without many heat spikes. This tends to produce complex Pinots with nice layers of flavor and elegance. Also, it is very consistent from year to year.

At Windy Oaks, we are able to get our fruit physiologically ripe each year, without very high sugar levels. That being said, even within Corralitos, there are some interesting microclimates.” Ah yes, as local viticulture expert Prudy Foxx says, “This area has hundreds, maybe thousands of microclimates. It’s not a mountain range: it’s a collection of unique, individual mountains, with different climates on the tops and sides. There is not a more perfect or challenging place to grow Pinot.”

And that’s what makes it so spicy and special.

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Photos of vineyard views by Mary Lindsay