Always thought Carneros was the home of CA Pinot…reportedly the source of the grapes for that '46 BV.
RT
I’m not trying to express an opinion about this being better than or earlier than someone else, but the Sanford & Benedict Vineyard (planted in 1971) always made terrific pinots, or at least did while Richard Sanford was at the helm of Sanford Winery.
Larry,
I agree; Hanzell. I brought a 1962 Heitz Pinot Noir to a blind Burgundy tasting ten years ago, and it was the WOTN. It was grown by Hanzell. James Zellerbach died in 1963, and his 1961 and 1962 wine stocks were sold to Heitz who bottled them. He was making great Pinot in the early sixties.
Cheers,
Warren
Chris,
The '76 S and B was great. But then there were partnership issues.
I was always amazed at how slow people were to plant near S and B. Lots of great wines were made from those grapes. I think that vineyard eventually drew lots of people to the region.
If my fuzzy memory is correct the first wines made from Sanford & Benedict Vineyard were produced by Vega Vineyards (now Mosby Winery).
For some reason I’m thinking that the winery was owned by the partners that planted the S&B Vineyard and there was a falling out. Sanford started his winery and gained control of the vineyard and dropped the “& Benedict” part from the vineyard name for some years. Someone with a better memory can help me out here if I have bollocked this up.
I do remember having a really nice 1977 Vega Vineyards Pinot about 1990.
Ray was a protege of the native Burgundian Paul Masson. Masson had a relationship with Louis Latour, buying barrels from them. He also went back to France (after making wine at New Almaden for quite awhile), visiting with relatives in Burgundy and Champagne to glean advice and get cuttings to plant his La Cresta Vineyard. He did make still Pinot Noir, though most references to his wines are the “Champagne”, there’s some indication the PN was good. Ray learned the craft from him, and I haven’t seen any references to any other influences until much later, when he sent Peter to Burgundy to glean winemaking tips.
They acquired the name, but there’s no winemaking connection (other than they’d bought the PMR fruit). Them having the name is controversial. If you want a direct lineage it’s Mount Eden.
From Sanford’s website:
Botanist Michael Benedict and his friend Richard Sanford were committed to finding a cool climate region and location with just enough heat accumulation to ripen, but not over ripen, wine grapes. A location where they could plant and grow grapes and craft wines, where the quality might equal the best of the best in Europe.
Michael began researching and touring the cool coastal regions of California in search of a region and site that would suit this mission. After an incredible amount of research, observation, collection of data and analysis, Michael believed he had found the perfect location - one which possessed just the right combination of weather patterns, overall cool climate and varying soil conditions. His analysis took him to a unique part of the Santa Ynez Valley in Santa Barbara County and right to the foot of the property that would ultimately become the Sanford & Benedict vineyard. The first vines were planted in 1973, and soon the Pinot Noir from this remote vineyard created a buzz. Others soon followed, wanting to capture the magic of this place. It was the Sanford & Benedict Vineyard which would form the backbone of what is now the Sta. Rita Hills AVA and it was also this vineyard that supplied the cuttings for many of the surrounding vineyards.
The team of Michael Benedict and Richard Sanford would go separate ways after the 1980 vintage and the Sanford Winery continued its existence. Through the years, Sanford Winery remained notable in the region for its pioneering history and for producing wines of high quality from the Sanford & Benedict Vineyard.
Also from their site:
1976 Handcrafted in a former hay barn, the first Pinot Noir from the Sanford & Benedict vineyard is released to enthusiastic reviews.
I guess it doesn’t quite say what the label read on that 1976 pinot. I am guessing it read “Sanford & Benedict.” I have a bottle of 1976 Sanford & Benedict cabernet (I had two, Blake Brown gave one to Richard Sanford for me a few years ago as a memento) and that’s how the label reads.
I drank this back in 2014. It is still the best Pinot I have ever had.
Yes I have had some very good ones…and early ones, but not necessarily great. WS, for whatever reason, was capable of hitting it out of the park. Reference the recent tasting in Jasper Morris website of several magnums of old WS pinots. Not all of them were fantastic, but when they were on, they were hard to match. Even for a burgophile like Jasper, they were as impressive as many of the hallowed vineyards of Cote D’Or.
Winery Lake
Wes,
I once met one of Paul Masson’s nephews at Pousse d Or sometime in the 80s. He was old, said his family had gotten some money when the winery was sold.
One time I was at Francois Freres and old Louis Latour dropped by. This was around 1980, either '79 and '81. Martin Ray winery wanted barrels and he was booked up, so he paid a call on Jean Francois.
Robert Atkin owned the Sanford and Benedict vineyard and was probably a major investor in Sanford then. He staged a tasting of every wine made from S and B. at his home in London sometime in the '90s. An amazing tasting.And guess who was there? Jasper Morris…just like he attended Raj’s tasting of William Selyem wines. The dude gets around.
Also Very amazing:
that the ‘76 S and B PN is still cookin’. Not the darkest wine ever.
Sometime in the 80s I took Andrew Barr around California for his book onPinot Noir. He noted that at every winery where they had purchased S and B fruit, the wine was great.Maybe the other wines sucked but the S and B wine was terrific.
Would love to see how those early Acacia wines are faring. We took some of those wines to Burgundy in’84 --?? In '91 Jean Francois opened one of them alongside a La Tache and a Cros Parantoux and the wine more than held its own.
The John Haeger book on Pinot Noir has lots of information on early Pinot Noir, clonal work, who imported what cuttings from where etc. He points out that much information is either contradictory or lost.
For me a big moment was my first wine trip to Oregon in 1978. I tasted wine at Knudsen Erath and Tualatin. I thought, for people just getting started, these wines are great and are going to get better.
3 Likes
I can’t agree here; I think their pinots, which need age, are strong classic expressions of the grape. Consistently fine. I agree that Chalone, Bruce, ABC, Sanford and Benedict and some of the others were leaders as well. I’ve never had real Martin Ray or BV. WS, at the time, were always a little more expensive than the others and so I did not drink them much, couldn’t afford them, but even if they were perhaps the best, as Dennis insists, not the first or the only true Pinot.
Here is one way to look at the question: There could be said to be five groups of wineries making Pinot:
1/people like Louis martini and BV…mostly nice wines but little that rocks your world. But they did important clonal work and led expansion into Carneros. These people have been around since before WWII.
2/During and post war people people like Martin Ray and Hanzell.Real pioneers with hit and miss records. Some great stuff.
3/Chalone, Eyrie, Swan, Mt Eden. who started putting out fine wines in the late 60s/early 70s
4/Then we have a whole bunch of people who started between '76 and '82…Acacia, Dehlinger, Saintsbury, Adelsheim, Erath, Carneros Creek, S andB, Edna valley, Calera,
Morgan, ABC, Williams Selyem, Saintsbury and probably lots more
5/The deluge
Carneros…BV, then Saintsbury, Acacia, Carneros Creek, Etude…
Etude started in '82. Bouchaine was a bulk wine facility until the current owners bought it in '81. Was their first vintage '82 or 83??
Something I got from the Haeger book. Rochioli sold fruit to Davis Bynum in the late 70s and Gary Farrell made their first wines.
I was selling Husch and Edmeades wines in the late 70s. The Husch pinot was pretty good before it went malo in the bottle.
I think this makes a lot of sense, but don’t think of Martini as a Pinot Noir pioneer. Perhaps sub in Paul Masson. I believe that Martin Ray was the first winery to label a wine as Pinot Noir in California (or the US, for that matter).
my casual acquaintance with Santa Monica CA ophthalmologist Dr Robert Sinskey
won me a few bottles of the single-vineyard Acacia PNs that Larry Brooks had vinified
from Madonna, Iund & Lea vineyards in the early/mid 1980s – each wine distinctive and highly expressive
took my mind off Burgundy in a creative way
The first great California Pinot I tasted was Chalone (these remain among the best wines I’ve ever tasted, period). Another early eyeopener was Dehlinger.
??? Not sure what that’s a response to.
Would love to see how those early Acacia wines are faring. We took some of those wines to Burgundy in’84 --?? In '91 Jean Francois opened one of them alongside a La Tache and a Cros Parantoux and the wine more than held its own.
I see bottles at auction here and there. I’ve been a little interested, especially in Iund bottlings, since we sourced from there for awhile. I have a '79 Winery Lake Chard of theirs, which isn’t so helpful to this thread, except that’s it’s slated to be tasted against a La Crema Vinera version.
La Crema Vinera comes in that same era where their were suddenly a bunch of quality PN producers. Short-lived producer with Joseph Swan’s protege Rod Burglund as winemaker/partner.