Anyone who has lived close to the ocean knows how its wildness and beauty gets into your bones and how its influence extends into the environment. The spirit of the sea penetrates everything in its path – and for the adventurous lot of winegrowers who farm the rugged West Sonoma Coast, that spirit will be celebrated at the West of West (WOW) Wine Festival on August 2-4 in Sebastopol.
This is the fourth WOW festival produced by the West Sonoma Coast Vintners, formed in 2011 to highlight the wines crafted from grapes grown on the coastline of West Sonoma County. Today, more than 40 producers and growers belong to the association—and they will be pouring wine at The Barlow Center in Sebastopol.
Four hundred people are expected each day at the event, featuring tastings of cool-climate Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Syrah, winemaker dinners paired with West County cuisine, seminars and music. “It’s going to be a mix of education and fun,” said West Sonoma Coast Vintners president Ken Freeman, who, with his wife Akiko, a winemaker, own Sebastopol-based Freeman Vineyard & Winery.
Many of the wineries featured at WOW produce an average of 2,000 to 3,000 cases annually. “These wineries are way up in the hills on the coast. It would take weeks, driving those winding roads, to visit all 40 of them; and I like to say you can do it here in one afternoon,” Freeman said.
‘Journey of Discovery’
Six sub-appellations belong to the West Sonoma Coast, which is about 20 miles long, almost eight miles deep and includes a 4-mile band that runs alongside the San Andreas Fault. Though the borderlines are still being finalized, the growing regions include Annapolis, Fort Ross-Sea View, Occidental, Freestone, Green Valley and Sebastopol Hills. They belong to the Sonoma Coast AVA, which covers more than a half-million acres—a size so diverse and large, it has become controversial.
The West Sonoma Coast Vintners are studying their own unique growing region, including climate and geology, to try to understand how different vineyards, even blocks, in the same area can account for flavor differences that are expressive. This might lead to a stamp they could legally call their own. It’s a complicated process that must be approved by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), and Carroll Kemp of Red Car Wine is leading a research study over the next couple of years related to the issue.
“It’s a journey of discoveries,” Keenan pointed out, noting, “At this point in time, we don’t have the answer. We have ideas.” He said the leaders from the six wineries who created the association – growers of high elevation, cool climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from Failla Wines, Littorai Wines & Estate Winery, Joseph Phelps Vineyards, Peay Vineyards, Red Car Wine and Freeman Vineyard & Winery – banded together to define the region for trade and consumers. As stated on westsonomacoast.com: “We advocate wines with a clear identity that evoke the complexity of our region and the authenticity of its community—wines with balance, integrity, character and nuance.”
Risky Business
Where, exactly, is ‘West of West’? It’s further out and higher up than most winegrowers in Sonoma County farm, where, on a clear and temperate day, the landscape and cool coastal air can invoke a utopian-like wonder in residents and visitors alike, leading one to understand how, on a daily basis—with feet on the ground—winegrowers fall in love over and over again with the place that lends its unique character to their wines.
As Linda Schwartz, president of Fort Ross Vineyard & Winery said in an association video about the region: “The weather was thought to be absolutely impossible for farming, as was the geography. What seemed to be a limiting factor turned out to be our biggest advantage. That is why we are here. We are celebrating this part of the world.”
On the flip side, farming is harder and more expensive. Freeman said the vintners dedicated to doing it take more risk by farming in a region with cooler weather and higher altitudes, and they spend more money to farm crops whose yields tend to be lower and grape clusters smaller.
“The cost to farm is conservatively 25 percent higher than 10 miles inland. The hills, the high elevation, make it tough. Most importantly, we’re growing 50 percent less fruit than you would get 10 miles inland, and that lower yield and the challenging environment make for the more complex wines,” Freeman said.
“It’s just passion that our members bring” to their work, “with a quest to educate the public about how challenging the terroir is and how interesting the wines are. That’s what it comes down to,” he explained.
About the Event
Winemaker Welcome Dinners. To kick off WOW on Friday, August 2, five wineries will give dinners at various locations on the Sonoma Coast. They include: Failla with an
al fresco dinner in the middle of its Olivet Road vineyard by Chef Gary Penir; Freeman with a dinner at the Freeman home catered by Chef Christopher Greenwald; Halleck Vineyard with a 5-course meal prepared by the Hallecks and served by their sons on a deck looking out to Mt. St. Helena; Joseph Phelps with a multi-course dinner at their Guest Center in Freestone; and Littorai with dinner at the propreitors Heidi and Ted Lemon’s estate winery property.
Seminars & Tastings at The Barlow. On Saturday morning, “Diamonds in the Sky” will explore the terroir of the newly formed Fort Ross-Seaview AVA. David Hirsch of Hirsch Vineyards and Lee Martinelli of Martinelli Winery will be on the panel, and there will be a tasting of that AVA’s wines. In the afternoon, “Syrah with a Unique Perspective” includes an interactive blind tasting of cool weather Syrah from the West Sonoma Coast and other important regions around the world with a panel of leading experts. Leading press will serve as moderators for both panels.
At 3 p.m., there is a grand tasting of more than 40 wines, described by fans as “coveted and hard-to-find gems, all pure expressions of the West Sonoma Coast.” Later that evening, there will be a grand dinner with a pre-dinner reception featuring white and rosé wines and oysters from Hog Island Oyster Company, followed by a seafood boil prepared by James Beard finalist Steven Satterfield from the Miller Union Restaurant in Atlanta.
WOW wraps up on Sunday, with vineyard tours to Freeman Vineyard, Halleck Vineyard and Doc’s Ranch Vineyard; a gourmet lunch from Peter Lowell’s in Sebastopol and the final grand tasting.
For tickets: www.westsonomacoast.com/west-of-west-festival/
Side Trip: Tasting Rooms Go Coastal
Wineries and growers participating in the WOW Wine Fest can be found at www.westsonomacoast.com; look for the interactive map. As a side trip, you could visit some of the wineries’ tasting rooms to learn more about the wines produced along the coast of West Sonoma County.
To see the closest vineyard to the Pacific Ocean in California, head up to Jenner to the Fort Ross Vineyard & Winery, where you can gaze at the ocean from the tasting room. “When you enter to go to the tasting room, you travel through our vineyard studded with oak trees, past a meadow, around the pond; and when you arrive at the tasting room, you have driven through the terroir,” winery president Linda Schwartz said.
Of the wines, she explained: “You have this cool maritime climate which produces limited grapes of small size, but the ratio of pulp to skin produces amazing intensity. We maintain our structure; we keep the minerality, the lively acidity and the nuanced tannins that seamlessly balances the wine with the pure fruit.”
Schwartz and other growers and producers in the area are still riding a high following the recent approval of the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA, after a long drawn-out process. She said wineries from the new AVA have just formed the Fort Ross-Seaview Winegrowers Association, with Daniel Schoenfeld of Wild Hog Vineyard serving as director. The group is preparing for its first annual Fort Ross-Seaview Wine Tasting Festival on October 26 at historic Fort Ross in Jenner.
Meanwhile, Schwartz said their winery has the first and only tasting room in the new AVA and welcomes visitors seven days a week. To visit: 15725 Meyers Grade Road, Jenner 95450, 707-847-3460.
