In the late 1970s there
was a planting boom in the Salinas Valley in Monterey. The degree day system developed by the
University of California to classify climate as it related to grape growing had
identified the region between Soledad and King City as having the same climate
as Bordeaux. So, move over Napa,
Monterey was going to become the Bordeaux of California. It seemed everyone was planting Cabernet
Sauvignon. One of the largest contiguous
Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards in the world was in Monterey. Unfortunately, by the late 1980’s everyone was
trying to figure out what went wrong.
The wines were horribly vegetative and herbaceous. Is this what Cabernet was supposed to taste
like? It turns out the degree day system
had overstated the heat in the Salinas Valley.
After the fog burned off and before the afternoon winds off the ocean swept
into the valley from the north the
temperatures did rise, but they never stuck around for more than a couple of
hours. The climate in the Salinas Valley
didn’t have the cumulative heat the degree day system predicted. It was just too cool for Cabernet Sauvignon.
This was the environment
into which I stepped when I joined the J. Lohr Winery in 1990. Jerry Lohr had planted a vineyard in
Greenfield, halfway between King City and Gonzales, and after a decade of
disappointment, he decided to stop pushing water uphill and grafted his
Cabernet Sauvignon to Chardonnay and Johannesburg Riesling. But rather than give up on his dream of
making Bordeaux styled wines in California he looked for another appellation
better suited to Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.
He found it just ninety miles south of his Greenfield vineyard, it was
called Paso Robles. Here the wine was luscious
and laden with dark fruit, gone were the methyl pyrazines that made the wine
taste like it was made from asparagus and bell peppers and not grapes. Since then, Paso Robles has blossomed as a
region ideally suited for the Bordeaux varieties; Merlot, Cabernet Franc and
Cabernet Sauvignon.
