The Secret Life of Grapes

Here's the typical scenario: a friend calls and says, "I'm finishing up a business meeting in the Bay Area. It's Friday and I thought I might tour the wine country. My flight leaves at 6 a.m. Monday. Got any ideas on where I should go?"

As it happens, I do. I write about wine for a living -- it's what I've done for the past 20 years. I get these calls fairly often, sometimes from the dreaded "friends of friends." I try to help. But there's this problem, known to all of us in the advice-giving business: people plead with you for advice and then don't take it. Somehow, they don't believe that what you're suggesting is the real deal.

I'll be direct: the wine-touring suggestions I'm about to offer really mean something. They are the fruits of two decades of sloshing through junk wines and snoring through boring wineries. I only wish somebody had told me about these places. If I had just 48 hours to visit the best hidden wineries in Mendocino, Sonoma, or Napa, this is where I'd go, who I'd see, and where I'd eat and sleep.

Mendocino County

I drive out of San Francisco under a great blue dome of a sky, heading north on Highway 101. After threading through the California highway patrols that infest Santa Rosa, freedom beckons: Highway 128, a two-lane road that climbs into remote, unpopulated hills. After 27 miles of cruising through switchbacks, I descend into Mendocino's Anderson Valley -- 20 miles long and just 1 mile wide.

The vineyard action takes place mid-valley, in a 10-mile stretch between Boonville and Navarro. Here, a nexus of cool ocean air and warmer inland air results in long, slow ripening. If the vines were any closer to the Pacific, you'd never have a harvest.

I head over to see Michel Salgues, the wine maker and director of Roederer Estate. A slim, dark-haired fellow in his 50s, Salgues speaks with a heavy French accent and smokes cigarettes almost defiantly. He was inserted into Anderson Valley a decade ago by the winery's owner, the French champagne house Louis Roederer.

"So you're back again?" he says when I pull into the elegant, restrained winery. He isn't surprised to see me. Roederer Estate makes California's best sparkling wine. "Can't keep me away," I grin. "Let's try l'Ermitage and see if you got it right this time."

The trick to grape growing is finding a place where grapes ripen each year, but just barely. The goal is not boring consistency -- at least not for fine wine -- but an expression of place. To do that, you have to pick at just the ripe moment: when both the sugars and acidity in the grape are in balance, and that unquantifiable thing called "flavor" is achieved.

There's flavor in Roderer's sparkling wines. It makes several different bottlings, such as a rosé and a regular brut, or dry. L'Ermitage is the priciest blend, made from the best lots and allowed to age longer.

We pop a bottle of the just-released 1991 vintage ($35) and set to work. "A little closed," I say. "I'm not convinced it's going to be as good as the '90."

"Maybe not," counters Salgues. "But I like the finesse." We both know these are quibbles. The wine is damn good. Roederer Estate's brut bottling ($16) and their refined rosé ($21) are equally noteworthy.

From Roederer I follow Highway 253 some 19 miles from Boonville to Ukiah, across the mountain range that separates Anderson Valley from inland Mendocino County. While there's a clutch of good wineries in the area, I'm really here to stop in at California's greatest brandy producer, a tiny artisan outfit called Germain-Robin.

Compare Germain-Robin's various brandies with the world standard, French Cognac, and Germain-Robin frequently wins. Germain-Robin's brandies are richer and fruitier; the best Cognacs are more austere.

The difference is all in the quality of the base wine. In the Cognac region, the wine that gets distilled is thin stuff. You wouldn't want to drink it. In comparison, Germain-Robin's base wine is genuinely good. More fruit shows up in the brandy itself -- but not too much more. Various batches of brandies are made at Germain-Robin, selling for between $30 and $125 a bottle. I especially like the Select Barrel XO's ($100) deft alliance of richness and finesse.

I do more smelling than tasting on this visit, as I've got to head south down Highway 101 to Sonoma County. Co-owner Ansley Coale's parting words: "Come back next time and I'll let you taste our $300 special reserve batch." He can bet on it.

Prime Mendocino Sleep Beija-Flor (Portuguese for hummingbird) is a remarkable country inn with a broad lawn and elegant yet natural plantings. At the moment, it has just one rustic but well-appointed cottage. The view from the back deck is a tangle of virgin forest. At night I'm reminded how isolated Anderson Valley really is. There's no ambient light. It's a star-studded sky of the sort I've seen only in the desert.

Coordinates: Beija-Flor, Tumbling McD Rd., Philo; 707-895-3455. $250 a night, including breakfast. By reservation only.