John Schreiner: What was the genesis of the single vineyard concept with Sandhill?

Howard Soon: I can’t claim credit for it. I think it was collusion with the marketing department. Perhaps some wineries don’t have the communication channel between marketing and production. We do. We have always had that because we are brand focused.

Calona had the Artist Series. I kept wanting to slip the grape growers in on the back label. It was important to me. I felt you’ve got to give credit to the guys who are growing the grapes. Marketing said: “Howie, that’s not the right place for it.”

At the same time, Burrowing Owl Winery started up. We were partners with Jim Wyse [whose family now controls the winery]. We made the first vintage, 1997, for Burrowing Owl in our winery [Calona], working with Bill Dyer [Burrowing Owl’s former consulting winemaker].

Marketing [at Cascadia] had the concept that we needed to push up into the premium area with our wines. They asked what we could do.

I said: “One of the simplest ways of going premium is single vineyard wines. Let’s give credit to our growers.” We decided to use the best vineyard we could – Burrowing Owl.

Sandhill captured a lot of the wishes and desires of other people who came to the table. For instance, Dick Cleave. I have known him for years – ever since he was growing grapes at Pacific Vineyards. That is where Burrowing Owl is now. [The former Pacific Vineyards, originally planted in the 1960s with hybrid grapes, was also briefly owned by Calona until it was sold in the early 1970s. Cleave was the long-time vineyard manager there. Most of the grapes were pulled out in 1988 as part of the industry’s adjustment to free trade and the land was largely idle for five years until Wyse and his partners bought it and began planting vinifera.]

Dick Cleave got through the free trade period [when most of Pacific Vineyards was pulled out] by growing market vegetables. He was growing peppers and stuff. He established a new home and vineyard, seven acres in size. He started growing grapes and selling them to home winemakers. They were pretty good grapes. Even I didn’t realize how good they were.

He said: “Howie, I want you to make some wines for me.” I said: “Dick, I work for Calona and Sandhill. I’ll see what I can do.”

His first fruit was 2000 – three years after the first Sandhill wine [from BOV]. I made some Syrah, just under 20 cases. It was superb Syrah, but it was only one barrel. But we realized that Dick had something going there, so his Phantom Creek became the next vineyard we brought on.

Then we talked about whites for Sandhill and decided to bring in the King family with Pinot Gris. (We couldn’t do the Pinot Gris from BOV even though we owned some of the fruit because it was all dedicated to Burrowing Owl.)

It was almost a no-brainer. The King Pinot Gris went into the 1999 Calona Artist Series that won best white wine of show at the Los Angeles County Fair. What we are trying to do is bet on sure things, things that we know have a history.

JS: If you are doing single vineyard wines, how does terroir express itself?

HS: First of all, you have done the right thing by not mixing the vineyards all up. I don’t think you can do terroir if it is not just a single vineyard. They have to go hand in hand.

I believe terroir is a quest. It is a process, which is the way we do our wines, too. We’re always trying to make better wines, so we focus on process, not outcome. We are always doing the best with everything that we do in the vineyard, then the wine takes care of itself.

We do have some ideas and goals as to what the outcome should be. But it kind of takes care of itself if you have good grapes. We make decisions to protect and express the terroir, and not be a winemaker that goes over on top of the fruit.

Really to me, terroir is the expression of the fruit quality. Our slogan is “a true expression of the vineyard” and that’s what we are trying to do.

We do use barrels, but like seasoning in food. We don’t do malolactic fermentation in Chardonnay anymore – although we may go back a little bit some day. But right now, I am happy: if we have great Chardonnay fruit, we will barrel-ferment it, because the oak needs to be there as a seasoning. But I don’t need ML because ML interferes with the fruit expression. It takes away the individuality. The vineyard can be expressed if you allow fruit to come through, not the ML.

There’s a situation where site selection is also part of terroir. You don’t grow something that doesn’t work. You would not grow Gewürztraminer in that vineyard and say, that’s the terroir of Burrowing Owl [because the site is too hot for the variety].

JS: With eight or nine vintages from BOV behind you, how has the fruit evolved?

HS: I think there has been more depth of flavour and more nuances, particularly with varieties that are more on the marginal side. Like Sangiovese or Barbera. 2003 was a hot, ripe vintage and we are seeing those varieties produce great wine. In a marginal year like 2001, not so much – a thin wine with not very much flavour. You would say there is not too much terroir expression in that wine. Fully ripened fruit, when it suits the vine, will give us the terroir we want.

JS: Is there a variety that performs well every year?

HS: Chardonnay. But we have had issues with nematodes down there. We are replanting.

Pinot Blanc is one of the oldest blocks we have at BOV. It is pretty exciting to see how it is coming along, from just simple fruit-forward wine to wines with all sort of nuances – lime rind, minerals. Everybody thinks that the terroir expression is the taste of the soil or the rock. I believe the sand [at BOV] is granitic because the cliff behind it is all granite. I believe there is ground-up granite in that sand and maybe that’s the minerality that we are tasting [in the wine].

JS: How old are the Pinot Blanc vines?

HS: They must have been planted in 1985 … pre-free trade. I remember making a 1987 Pinot Blanc.

JS: Have you made the Pinot Blanc the same way every year?

HS: We have since the 1990s. It is barrel-fermented in American oak. There is a lineage of awards and acclaim for that wine.

It’s not heavy oak. I say that a touch of oak reflects skill. I look for that when I taste other people’s wines. It shouldn’t be the main thing you taste. If there is too much oak, then you are not protecting the terroir. You are flavouring the wine and I don’t think that is right.

When a guy buys a bottle of wine, it is an expression of a place. When we are tasting wine from the Okanagan Valley, it should have a taste that is different from Australia. If you overdo the oak, then it all tastes the same.

From my early career, a lot of our wines did taste the same. They were not distinct and that was because we did not do a good job with the winemaking. A sign of good winemaking is when every wine has a distinctive flavour. That means someone in the winery is taking care with the grapes.

JS: Where do most of the Sandhill wines come from? From either Burrowing Owl or [Cleave’s] Phantom Creek.

HS: In volume, it comes from Burrowing Owl and the Pinot Gris is from the King vineyard. We also do some little batch stuff that is always fun. Osprey Ridge is the vineyard owned by Robert Goltz, the guy who manages Burrowing Owl Vineyard. We did a Viognier from there in 2004. Very nice. Just 70 cases but a nice wine.

JS: There seems to be a difference between the soil on the uphill side of the road and the downhill (western) side. I think there is more sand on the uphill side. Does Phantom Creek grow varieties that mirror those in Burrowing Owl.

HS: Yes. Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. What kills me is that there is a distinctive difference, almost a night and day difference, in the tannins. The tannins in all the Phantom Creek reds are soft. They are full but very soft – no astringency at all. Cabernet Sauvignon from there is incredible. You can easily get astringency in the BOV Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.

I think BOV’s Syrah has more of a tannic presence than we get from Phantom Creek. If you had a glass of each of those, you definitely would tell the difference.

JS: The farming methods would be much the same?

HS: Yes. Robert Goltz and Dick Cleave essentially run things similarly. They are partners.

JS: You might be tempted to blend them if you did not have a single vineyard mandate.

HS: Not with Sandhill. But by not combining the two, you are having more fun – because they are different.

For Sandhill, we blend the BOV Syrah with BOV Cabernet Sauvignon – rich, ripe Cabernet Sauvignon – the blend is actually a better wine than either the Syrah or the Cab. They seem to very much dovetail.

Phantom Creek’s Cabernet Sauvignon is great by itself, but we enhance it with a little bit of Petit Verdot and Malbec, which also grows there. The blend is called Sandhill one -- a better wine than the Cabernet by itself.

[That is one of the wines in the Small Lots program. Others include Sandhill two, blended with BOV Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc; and Sandhill three, Howard Soon’s version of a Super-Tuscan red made with BOV Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon and Barbera.]

Dick grows three clones of Cabernet Sauvignon - Clone 15, 191 and 169. Clonal variety is also part of the terroir expression. Terroir is a catch-all that says this is the expression of the vineyard in the wine.

That expression of the vineyard is the clone, the weather, the water, the climate – but it is also the knowledge of the grower, and how it is grown, and the knowledge of the winemaker.

JS: What is it that makes Pinot Gris special in the King vineyard?

HS: I think these are the factors that make it special:

First of all, the King brothers have that whacky trellis — four trunks come out of one plant; and they come up to the wire and you have four cordons, going in different directions. They have an upper cordon and a lower cordon from each one of those four, going in both directions. But the vine spacing is further apart, and the exposure to sunlight is pretty good.

His theory is that the vine’s energy is dissipated by letting it grow where it wants to grow. It is probably the right idea because the soil in the King vineyard is so fertile, so vigorous, that you have to do something.

Coolness is the other thing about that site. It has a long season with long hang time. We don’t have to pick it right away.

One of the advantages of the King vineyard is that the pH levels don’t get out of control. It is an issue down south, where the pH goes sky high. I don’t know if it is the sandy soil [that is the cause]. When the grapes get close to ripeness for picking, the pH can go close to 3.9 or 4, when you really are wishing for 3.5, 3.6. That’s a bit of difficulty for us in winemaking.

JS: The high pH is a consequence of picking grapes on flavour, rather than on the numbers, is it not?

HS: If the flavour is not there, you cannot make a good wine. If the pH is too high, we can fix that – but the flavour has to be there.

JS: Do you have to acidify?

HS: We do acidify and hope we get some reduction of the pH. Tannin quality and flavour of the fruit will, with the reds, come with the higher Brix levels. Fortunately or unfortunately, as we get higher alcohols.

We pick our fruit on flavour and keep our fingers crossed on pH. In really hot years, the total acidity has dropped right out of there. We know we can back-adjust that and it will be great. The flavour has to be there.

JS: That gets back to terroir.

HS: That’s right. You have to pick at the right time because flavour is very key to expressing terroir. If you get a different winemaker with a different idea of when the picking decision occurs, the expression of the terroir might be hampered.

JS: What is the vineyard source of Sandhill’s 2004 Gewürztraminer? [This was the first example of this varietal under the Sandhill label.]

HS: It is [the Seven Mountain Vineyard] in Westbank, on the edge of Lakeview Heights. It is owned by Tony Petretta, who works for us in the winery.

JS: What is special about Tony’s site?

HS: Here’s what we claim: because it is on the slope of Mount Boucherie, the soil is volcanic. It is light and gravely and sandy, all at the same time. It is heavier than what we see in Oliver.

JS: How does that wine differ from Gewürztraminer you have made from other sources?

HS: It is more intense, more flavourful. It lends itself to being dry. Typically, you have to have one and a half per cent residual sugar to fill in the wines from this variety, unless the fruit intensity is good enough and the crop levels are low enough – although his crop level was pretty normal, about three and a half tons an acre.

So we don’t know why [that Gewürztraminer was distinctive.] That’s something that will take further study. It does taste different from Gewürztraminers we made from other vineyards.

As you know, in the winery, we do everything by vineyard lot. We avoid mixing vineyards unless we have to. Our goal is to make every vineyard lot separately. Our goal is to maximize the expression of terroir.

JS: Even for Calona wines, do you keep batches separate?

HS: Yes. Unless we know right off the bat that a certain wine is a Coppermoon white, it might end up in a tank with some other Coppermoon whites. [Coppermoon is the entry-level VQA label at Calona Vineyards.]

JS: Where do you go after making vineyard-designated wines?

HS: I can see us going by blocks one day, and selling it that way. We have four different blocks of Merlot at Burrowing Owl. We could bring out a block designation if we wanted to. There is a potential in each block.

That may be a way to solve the problem of being small but big. To make a living, you have to be pretty big to achieve economies of scale. But small is where it is at, as far as quality goes.

~ John Schreiner, British Columbia Editor


To comment on John Schreiner’s writings and thoughts, contact him at j.schreiner@appellationamerica.com