When I joined Richard Sanford and Nick de Luca of Alma Rosa in late October for a long-anticipated chat, the duo had a surprise up their sleeves: Two new sparkling wines.
These first-ever Alma Rosa sparklers, a brut rosé and a blanc de blancs, will be released on Dec. 1, the two said.
Sanford and his wife, Thekla, had just returned from Washington, D.C., where they had attended the Smithsonian Food History Weekend’s gala dinner and poured the sparkling wine to praise from fellow guests, Sanford said.
The weekend included “outreach and connection to promote Julia Child,” he said, recalling how the couple had been guests of the famed chef before her death in 2004.
It’s no stretch to compare Sanford and Child for their respective groundbreaking efforts: He a founding Sta. Rita Hills producer, and she a master of French food for the American palate.
Sanford was among the several local winemakers and grape growers who drafted the boundaries of the legendary Sta. Rita Hills American Viticultural Area (AVA), finalized in 2001.
As founder with former partner Michael Benedict of the iconic Sanford & Benedict Vineyard on Santa Rosa Road, planted in 1970, Sanford is a legend in Santa Barbara County and the wine world.
And he’s quite happy with how pinot noir has grown to fame in Santa Barbara County, and in the Sta. Rita Hills in particular.
The AVA’s soils range from sandy (the Highway 246 side) to clay (the Santa Rosa Road side) and the average daily temperatures are ideal for both pinot noir and chardonnay.
In 2012, Sanford was inducted into the Vintners Hall of Fame at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena, the first Santa Barbara County winemaker to be so honored.
But the years leading up to that esteemed honor were anything but rosy for Richard and Thekla Sanford.
In 2005, the Chicago-based Terlato Wine Group bought the Sanfords out of the winery that they founded in 1981. It was not a sweet parting of ways, but the couple got to their feet and founded Alma Rosa the same year.
“Alma” is Spanish for soul, and Richard, Thekla and their daughter, Blakeney Sanford, set their sights on the future. They utilized screw cap closures on all the wines in an effort to continue Richard Sanford’s focus on stewardship of the land, and relocated their production to Buellton.
However, making a profit making and selling wine is a tough road, and the Sanfords struggled to stay afloat amid a mountain of debt that followed them from their namesake winery.
In 2012, Alma Rosa filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, giving the Sanfords some room to breathe.
In January 2014, an investor by the name of Bob Zorich, a resident of Houston, Texas, who also has a home in Santa Barbara, stepped up and made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.
Zorich’s investment in the winery allowed the company to emerge from bankruptcy. While it’s true that Sanford is now an employee of Zorich’s Alma Rosa, he remains the face of the brand, and his family is free to focus on what it does best: Grow grapes and make and market wines.
Alma Rosa’s Buellton tasting room on Industrial Way is a thing of beauty, full of old timber from the original Sanford winery — “that was part of my separation deal,” Sanford said with a smile — plus lots of natural light and a regal olive tree in the center of the room.
The tree has a name: “Olivia” weighs 3 tons and stands 15 feet tall. Her canopy is 16 feet.
With the Santa Barbara-based company Blackbird Architects, Richard and Blakeney Sanford designed the space to reflect the Sanford family’s history and tenure in the Sta. Rita Hills.
Today, Sanford seems relaxed, both with de Luca at the helm and with years of money troubles finally erased.
“Now, it’s grape growing and winemaking without compromise,” he said.
Without financial constraints, there’s no need to “rush” to bottle in order to free up barrels for a new vintage, for example.
With two vintages behind them —de Luca joined Alma Rosa for the 2014 harvest — Sanford and de Luca are companionable and eager to share what lies ahead for the label. In 2014, the two produced about 12,500 cases of wine, de Luca noted.
The case production for 2015, with lower yields across the board, will be “slightly less.”
Alma Rosa’s historic El Jabali Vineyard on Santa Rosa Road is currently under planting to grow by 36 acres, Sanford said. Another estate site is the nearby Arita Hills Vineyard, which Alma Rosa leases.
At Alma Rosa, Sanford is founder and director of winemaking — “the architect” — and de Luca “the general contractor,” the latter told me.
It’s clear from talking with them that the two men are a solid team. The Alma Rosa wines are produced at Terravant Wine Company, just down Industrial Way from the tasting room.
De Luca brings many years of cellar and winemaking experience to Alma Rosa.
“My first real experience as a winemaker was at Fisher Vineyards on Spring Mountain” in Santa Rosa, he recalled.
From there, de Luca moved first to Healdsburg’s Williams-Selyem, and then to Byington Winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains region, he said.
Before joining up with Sanford at Alma Rosa, de Luca was winemaker for Dierberg Star Lane, from 2004 to 2010.
With the 2010 vintage, de Luca launched his own label, Ground Effect, and produced small-lot reds and whites through the 2014 vintage, he said, before selling that label to fellow Santa Barbara County winemakers earlier this year.
With Alma Rosa, Sanford honors his roots in the heritage of Sta. Rita Hills, keeping his focus on what he describes as a 60-to-40 production ratio of pinot noir and chardonnay.
That said, the pinot gris (aka pinot grigio) grape varietal is “not insignificant” in Alma Rosa’s overall production, he noted; he believes the varietal is another one that thrives in the cool Sta. Rita Hills AVA.
While Alma Rosa focuses on producing vineyard designate and clonal selections of pinot noir and a vineyard-specific (El Jabali) chardonnay, he and de Luca offer also make three Santa Barbara County-based varietals in the Alma Rosa chardonnay, pinot gris and pinot blanc.
“(The three) are delicious wines, but more modestly priced,” Sanford told me, emphasizing the “wide variety” found in the Santa Barbara County appellation as a whole. The three wines retail for around $20.
Their goal with the three more modestly priced wines, de Luca noted, is “to make wine for regular people.”
Believe me, the three Santa Barbara County-based Alma Rosa wines are perfectly delicious and drinkable right now.
Sanford favors blending a varietal from various vineyards, because each site brings character to the wine.
“It’s exciting to blend from different sites, as it takes a few years to establish a ‘style’ for each vineyard,” he said. “Balance in the vineyard translates to balance in the finished wines.”
The current Alma Rosa Santa Barbara County chardonnay comprises three vineyards’ flavors: Sierra Madre (“cool and tropical”), White Hills (“cooler, and aromatic”) and El Camino (“at the west end of Los Alamos, a site whose grapes add ‘fatness’ to the blend”), Sanford noted.
The result is “the beauty of blending brightness into the fatness.”
The chardonnay remains on its lees in stainless steel tanks right up until bottling, he said, and the result is a very bright wine full of the essence of green apple.
Sanford and de Luca see eye to eye on their favored “leaner” style of wine, one that highlights the grapes’ natural acidity, de Luca said.
Consistently America’s “sweetheart” grape, the chardonnays of a decade or two ago, were “so fat and oaky,” Sanford said, but today, in general, consumers have moved on and favor the leaner, more expressive chardonnays that retain more of the grape’s natural acidity.
Other current releases include a pinot noir vin gris (rosé ) from El Jabali Vineyard; a pinot blanc and a pinot gris, each from La Encantada Vineyard; a chardonnay from El Jabali; and five pinot noirs: one from La Encantada and one a blend from the Sta. Rita Hills; and three clonal selections: Mt. Eden Clone, El Jabali; Clone 115, La Encantada, and Clone 667, also La Encantada.
Blakeney Sanford, a longtime artist, designed the labels for all of the wines. For the trio of Santa Barbara County wines, she used soft hues of colors, such as the sage green found in lichen, her father noted, and bolder colors for the clonal pinot noirs.
As we tasted through the pinot noirs, Sanford discussed how various clones and the discrepancies in soils are factors that produce good, great and excellent wines.
Describing two of Alma Rosa’s higher-end pinot noirs, Sanford fondly termed them “super,” and “super duper.” The clone 667 pinot noir from La Encantada Vineyard has earned a “super duper” descriptor:
“It’s (lighter) appearance belies the flavor; it’s much more complete that it would appear, based on its color. It’s pretty, and it’s sophisticated,” he said.
Another beauty is the 2010 pinot noir, celebrating Sanford’s years in the business, which sports a red label stating “Richard Sanford Celebrates Forty Years of Winegrowing.” The wine is deep and dark, having been aged for three years in barrel.
Only 200 cases were produced, with half under screw cap and half under cork, Sanford said. The bottles with screw caps have already sold out, “much to our delight,” he noted.
While the new sparkling wines are Sanford’s first for Alma Rosa, back in 1996, he produced a sparkling brut rosé with Christian Roguenant, the Burgundy-born winemaker who, at the time, was the winemaker for Maison Deutz, which now is Laetitia Vineyard & Winery in Arroyo Grande.
Case production on the Alma Rosa brut rosé is 232, and for the blanc de blancs, 237, de Luca said.
Both sparkling wines are exquisite, and showcase the power of pinot blanc, Sanford and de Luca note.
“Pinot blanc’s true calling may be sparkling wines,” the latter said, adding that Alma Rosa is the sole Sta. Rita Hills producer of pinot blanc.
Alma Rosa’s tasting room is open daily from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday through Sunday, and is at 181-C Industrial Way.
For more information, call 805.688-9090.
— Laurie Jervis blogs about wine at www.centralcoastwinepress.com, tweets at @lauriejervis and can be reached via winecountrywriter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are her own.