Vintner creates Pinot gold from Sonoma Coast's mysterious mother lode
Published 4:00 am, Sunday, March 8, 2009
David Hirsch's vineyard is a giant puzzle writ in earth. On a ridge at 1,500 feet just 3 miles from the Pacific Ocean, vines snake down steep slopes and along twisting hillsides. The water is visible through gaps in the redwoods, at least during breaks in the rain and fog. If ever there were a vineyard on the edge of reason, this would be it.
Yet this ridgetop outside Cazadero hosts some of California's most astonishing Pinot Noir. In part, Hirsch earned a reputation as the first grower to draw serious attention to wine grapes on the outer Sonoma Coast, north of the Russian River. But it's also because wines with the Hirsch name - those made by others and under the label he founded in 2002 - command an immediate presence. In any lineup, they stand out as a bit bolder, a bit more tannic, more clearly destined for long life. Though it may have been dumb luck that Hirsch settled here, his neighborhood has grown up to be the Gold Coast for California Pinot Noir: Flowers, Marcassin, Martinelli's famous Blue Slide Ridge were all planted nearby.
A soil's signature
For all the acclaim, the secrets of Hirsch's success remain a bit of a mystery, at least on the surface. For most of 30 years he has been trying to decode a wild jumble of subsoils that include rocks of all types mixed with everything from porous sandstone to impenetrable clay. It led him to divide his 71 vineyard acres into 60 different blocks, each with its own soil signature, each farmed on its own. "If you're focused on the site," he says, "you're looking for what's happening underground."
Such lack of consistency is extremely rare among vineyards, which makes the site defy easy comprehension. As his winemaker Mark Doherty puts it: "There's no elevator story." The best comparison, inevitably, might be to the Burgundy's endlessly divided lieux-dits, where quality has been divined row by row, but only after centuries.
At a fashionable moment for winemakers to flit between vineyards, Hirsch stays close to home. He and his Czech-born wife, Marie, reside in their weather-beaten, dacha-like home next to block 9A (though they're currently building a new one). A good half hour drive up winding roads from the nearest hamlet provides ample isolation. Hirsch is fully immersed in the topic, which can leave mere mortals struggling to follow his discourses.
"When you talk to David," says Vanessa Wong of Peay Vineyards, who made the first two vintages of Hirsch's own wine, "it's like trying to follow a kite."
But for Hirsch, working to decode one's own land is very much a vintner's prerogative. As inspiration, he cites none other than Aubert de Villaine of Burgundy's immortal Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, who continually revises vineyard practices "like he's someone with a real problem in the market," Hirsch says.
A would-be winemaker
A Bronx native with traces of a hometown accent who attended Columbia University, Hirsch seems an unlikely farmer. His trip west began in 1968 when he headed for Mexico and wound up in Santa Cruz, trading in handicrafts and later running a clothing firm.
Wine wasn't even in the equation when he purchased a 1,100-acre former sheep ranch in 1978, following "an intuition that California was getting too crowded." Hirsch paid $425,000 for two scraggly parcels near Fort Ross, torn up by timber harvests and shepherding when he arrived with dreams of reforestation. Some 80 inches of rain annually made for serious runoff. The hillsides were left with thin soils that offered easy access to what he would discover was a vast geological kaleidoscope underneath.
Though a few nearby ranching families had vines, grapes were hardly common in the rural, poor, somewhat hippie-ish hills of far west Sonoma. But during a 1980 visit, vintner Jim Beauregard, a friend from Hirsch's Santa Cruz days, suggested the site could be famous for Pinot Noir. The first vines went in, almost as a lark.
Hirsch wasn't convinced of the potential for wine. He had an agronomist make a map of soil types, thinking he might harvest shiitake mushrooms. They discovered a wild patchwork, the result of the uplift of the ancient seabed and the constant grinding of the San Andreas Fault just a mile west. This mix, called the Franciscan assemblage, is found all along the coast. But in Hirsch's case it is at an extreme.
The three Pinot kings
Hirsch added more vines in 1988, using cuttings from Mount Eden Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains. But his grapes were mostly sold in obscurity until February 1994. That month, three would-be Pinot kings - Ted Lemon of Littorai Wines, plus Steve Kistler of Kistler Vineyards and Burt Williams of Williams Selyem - paid a visit. The crazy melange of soils compelled them. "We were all very impressed right away," Lemon recalls.
Each began making a Hirsch-designated wine, and their interest prompted a major change: Hirsch started selling by the acre, not the ton. The fruit dramatically improved. Before long, Hirsch had one of California's defining Pinot Noir vineyards.
"You can find fruitier wines from all over," says Lemon, "but the quintessential definition of that part of the Sonoma Coast, to me, is his wines."
Though there's no obvious signature to wines from Hirsch fruit, there are certain unifying threads. If painters attempt trompe l'oeil, I think of Hirsch wines as trompe nez - tricking the nose. Smell them and find spicy, dark, California-style fruit. Taste, and the flavors burst with a rare brightness before moving beyond to complex earth notes. A huge mineral structure lurks beneath. These are not fruit-driven wines.
There's more than soil at work. Weather is deviously unpredictable, with temperature swings of 20 degrees in short distances - "mini-microclimates," in Hirsch's words. Storms are frequent and constant winds over the ridges stress the vines.
But ripeness is rarely a concern. Hirsch typically starts picking between late August and late September, just slightly early of average. "With all due respect to the millions of words written about the effect of the California coastal climate, I would say that is a bunch of hockey poo," he says. "The most significant terroir in our case is the San Andreas Fault."
In truth, it took Hirsch almost two decades to reach that conclusion. In 1998, a wet season devastated one parcel where magnesium-heavy clay hardpan produced vines with great vigor but lateral roots. Those shallow roots mildewed in the damp earth. Dabbling in topsoils, and farming his parcels more or less uniformly, had been a mistake. "What I realized is that we needed to start addressing our issues to the site," Hirsch says.
So he essentially hit a reset button. A soil specialist spent 18 months digging pits. Then Hirsch and his longtime vineyard manager, Everardo Robledo, began to plant dozens of new blocks across 27 acres. They balanced mineral content using alternative formulas developed by soil scientist William Albrecht, then carefully managed water to drive roots down into the subsoils. Now each block is farmed and harvested individually.
This becomes dizzying, even as Hirsch pulls out detailed charts to explain. Take field 12. Soils switch as frequently as every 20 feet; on less than 6 acres sit five Pinot clones and a Chardonnay plot on three different rootstocks.
"We gave up trying to master it," Hirsch says. "We just sort of settled in and got comfortable with the uncertainty and the complexity."
That complexity helps explain why a signature in the glass is so elusive. Doherty vinifies each block for the Hirsch Pinot Noir separately, using indigenous yeasts. A sample from block 8A-1 -Pommard clones aged in new oak - has brilliant floral notes and refined tannins. The equivalent from 8A-2, just a few feet away in the vineyard, is almost halting in mineral intensity. But Hirsch insists that the final blend - from 33 blocks in 2006 - be a snapshot of the whole site.
Which just starts the mystery all over again. Says Ehren Jordan of Failla Wines, who buys Hirsch fruit: "I think it's a life's work and it's probably a multigenerational life's work."
Perhaps, then, the only solution to the puzzle is to embrace its difficulty. Hirsch seems to be doing just that.
A sampling of Hirsch Vineyards' estate wines
2007 Hirsch Vineyards Sonoma Coast Chardonnay ($50) Almost a side project for Hirsch, from the vineyard's two Chardonnay blocks (10 and 12B). Consider it a reaction to David Hirsch being "appalled" by modern 1990s Chardonnay styles. Starting in 2005, winemaker Mark Doherty fermented a small amount in glass vessels to preserve the freshness and bite. In 2007, 12 percent was made in glass, with a mix of steel and oak (just 12 percent new) for the rest. A big success, as it brims with lemon and citrus peel, woodruff and intense mineral freshness. Lavish fruit and lees richness up front, but the back explodes with that mineral power - never losing the fruit, but taking it somewhere new.
2007 Hirsch Vineyards Bohan-Dillon Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir ($30) Hirsch likes to think of this as his "village" wine, in Burgundian terms - more fruit-forward and exuberant than ageworthy. Still, it was assembled from 39 vineyard blocks. Starts with rose water, brown spice and roasted cherry and then the trompe nez appears: flavors of tangy raspberry and a firm mineral underpinning give it juicy distinction.
2006 Hirsch Vineyards Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir ($60) One of our Top 100 Wines last year, this hails from a harvest that saw Hirsch's highest yields in nine years. The mainline bottling, using about 40 percent new oak, is from about one-half Pommard clones, and its intensity is evident, with a dusky brown-spice nose leading to bright currant, raspberry and mineral. Quintessential in that dark-fruit opening leading to a powerful, lifted, still-tight palate. Give it three years or more.