Sometimes you see something coming but it still knocks you over. After last year’s Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival, the numbers in my notes led to inescapable arithmetic: this slender, cool valley just a ridgeline or two from the ocean was on pace to more than double the number of Pinot Noirs it produces in just three years.

Yet it was still amazing this year to enter the tent (cleverly erected like a Mediterranean courtyard, with an open plaza in the center) and see table after table of polished Pinot Noirs waiting for the hundreds of people lined up outside. Along with long-time stalwarts were first-timers such as Malm Cellars and Phillips Hill Estates. The garagiste group was well represented, including Wells Guthrie of Copain Wine Cellars and James MacPhail of MacPhail Family Winery. So was the intriguing new crew of local vineyard owners who have launched their own labels, such as Baxter and Toulouse. Even Burt Williams, co-founder of famed Williams-Selyem, was behind a table: the one for his daughter’s label, Brogan Cellars. In sum, producers pouring at the event, on May 19th, reported nearly 70 current Anderson Valley Pinot Noir programs. That doesn’t include producers who did not attend, such as Gryphon and Littorai. When I counted those missing wines as well as new programs already in the pipeline, the total came to nearly 20 more Anderson Valley Pinot Noirs – most of them set to debut in the next two years.

The Sites Are Getting More Specific

Most of these programs are small, from 50 to 400 cases. For one thing, Anderson Valley as a whole has little more than 2000 acres of grape vines – one-fifth the acreage of Russian River Valley. So even though Pinot Noir accounts for more than half the acreage in Anderson Valley, it’s still estimated at less than 1200 acres. On top of that, Roederer Estate and Scharffenberger Cellars use a huge amount of that fruit to produce more than 100,000 cases of methode champenoise sparkling wine (traditionally a blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir).

The result? The rest of the fruit comes from mostly small to medium-sized parcels of Pinot Noir sprinkled into interesting sites throughout the valley. That’s why so many Pinot Noirs from Anderson Valley are vineyard-designated, and a growing number are block-designated. This in turn means that most Anderson Valley Pinot Noirs are distinctively terroir-driven – always a welcome thing for Pinot fans.

The two most striking examples of this phenomenon at the Festival were Black Kite Cellars and Toulouse Vineyard. Black Kite produces four wines from a 12-acre Anderson Valley vineyard of the same name. The 17-acre Toulouse Vineyard was designated on wines from four different labels in the Festival tasting: Baxter, MacPhail, Phillips Hill, and vineyard owner Vern Boltz’ own Toulouse Vineyards label.

All eight wines are delicious and well-crafted, but it’s the differences and similarities that caught my attention. The four Black Kites are all clearly distinct, even though they were grown in the same small, forest-enclosed vineyard. The four Toulouse wines are strikingly similar, suggesting that the site has spoken clearly despite big differences in the ages and experience of the four winemakers.

Black Kite: Dissecting Terroir

I visited Black Kite Vineyard just a few days after the Festival and found it to be an instant education in Anderson Valley terroir and microclimates. The property slopes fairly steeply downward to the north, to the banks of the Navarro River. Rising up from the river on the other side are two winery estate vineyards, Husch Vineyards and Londer Vineyards.

From the top of Black Kite Vineyard, you can also see the winery and vineyards of Roederer Estate one ridge further north (see accompanying photo). I know all three of these estates north of the river, but had never seen them from the Black Kite Vineyard. This new perspective showed without a doubt that the vineyards on these properties are all surrounded by lower-lying areas that drain cool air and moisture away and maximize warmth and sun exposure for the vines.

Within the Black Kite property, the north-facing slope defies conventional wisdom that cool-climate vineyards should face south to capture as much sun as possible. In addition, the three four-acre vineyard blocks are individuated by planting and plant material. The vine rows of the top block, Redwoods’ Edge, run down the slope to the Stony Terrace block, where the vine rows change direction and cross the slope. At the bottom of the property is the River Bend block, which is a flat bench not much higher than the river bed. A large portion of land between these latter two blocks is not cultivated at all. Redwoods’ Edge is planted to so-called Dijon clones of Pinot Noir (114 and 115), and the other two are planted to Pommard.

With me on my visit were winemaker Jeff Gaffner and vineyard manager Paul Ardzrooni. They provide their services on a consulting basis to Rebecca Green Birdsall, who launched the Black Kite label to take advantage of the vineyard her family purchased a generation earlier. Gaffner is well known for his Saxon Brown label, and Ardzrooni’s crews manage 500 vineyard acres in Anderson Valley.

Gaffner related that he wasn’t really looking for more consulting work, but when he saw the vineyard he couldn’t resist Birdsall’s request. “It’s a unique site in a special appellation,” he said. “That’s something all great Pinot Noirs share, all over the world. Once I saw this place I knew I had to make wine from it.”

Ardzrooni feels the same way about farming it. “This close to the ocean, you just don’t see vineyards like this facing north and tucked into the forest,” he explained. “You would never draw it up like this, but the vines get what they need from the site and the grapes ripen up real nice and slow.”

Not only that, the three blocks ripen with such individual character that Gaffner made four wines from the 2005 vintage: one each from the three blocks and one blend of all three. Production volumes are small, but these are wines worth seeking out. (Note to winemaking buffs: with a collection of all four bottlings, you can reverse-engineer Gaffner’s whole-vineyard cuvée at home – or create a blend you like even better.)

Both Gaffner and Ardzrooni credit Birdsall for letting them develop the potential in both the site and the wine. “It’s a slippery slope,” she laughs. “Our family made the decision to go for quality before we actually knew what that costs. But now that we see what the vineyard can do, we could never pull back.”

Toulouse Vineyard: Disseminating Terroir

At Toulouse Vineyard, Vern Boltz has every reason to push even further forward. He purchased the vineyard from Scharffenberger Cellars in 1997 when the sparkling winery needed cash for a new pond. “We used to call that property the red wine hill,” says long-time Scharffenberger general manager and winemaker Willis “Tex” Sawyer. “We didn’t really want to sell it, because we thought we’d grow our own Pinot Noir up there some day. So we’re happy to see how things turned out.”

So is Boltz. He has quickly established a vineyard that can stand alongside better-known, much larger growers in Anderson Valley such as Savoy Vineyard and Ferrington Vineyard. Unlike those operations, Boltz has also developed a winery and is making impressive wine under his own label.

Toulouse Vineyard was planted to 15 acres of Pinot Noir in 1998 (Dijon clones 115, 667 and 777), followed by another acre of Pinot (Wädenswil) and an acre of Riesling. Boltz originally planned to sell grapes to local wineries, but his first vintages arrived as the grape market collapsed in 2000 and 2001. He promptly bonded the property for a winery so he could make bulk wine to sell outside the valley.

But his first retail bottling, from 2002, was a success. Just as important, he began selling grapes to MacPhail, who was beginning a rapid rise to stardom. Now two more young garagiste winemakers, both local, have hopped on the Toulouse bandwagon: Phil Baxter and Toby Hill. Their 2005 Pinot Noirs from the vineyard, like Boltz’ own, are full-bodied, dark-flavored beauties that show off exactly why French enologists developed clones 115, 667 and 777: to naturally deliver all the flavor, color, and textural components that a Pinot Noir vine can put into a grape.

Bolzt is currently selling just a small part of his fruit to his three vineyard-designate customers, and his 2006 production under his own label will be only 1700 cases. So there’s clearly room to increase production of wine with “Toulouse Vineyard” on the label.

Not only that, Boltz has another parcel, about 15-20 acres, that he thinks would be good for Pinot Noir. If he’s got enough water to irrigate more vines and keep them safe from frost, it’s a good bet he’ll expand. That’s good news for Anderson Valley vintners, who need to produce more wine in order to cement their rising regional reputation. It’s also good news for wine drinkers, who get the ultimate enjoyment from site-specific, hand-crafted Pinot Noir.

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Photos by Thom Elkjer