The dozens of wineries that debut each year in California all have interesting stories behind them, but Alma Rosa's story is more compelling than most. It stars Richard Sanford, the first to plant Pinot Noir in the Santa Ynez Valley, founder of Sanford Winery together with his wife, Thekla, and a pioneer and zealot for Pinot Noir in Santa Barbara County. ("Let's go to Sanford Winery," the leading character, Miles, suggests to his buddy in the film, Sideways. "They make the best Pinot Noir in California.") The Sanfords today have channeled their passion and experience into Alma Rosa Winery, and no longer are involved with their namesake winery.
Alma Rosa makes four wines: two Pinot Noirs, a Pinot Gris and a Chardonnay. The Sanfords source their grapes from the 100-acre La Encantada vineyard in the Sta. Rita Hills AVA of Santa Barbara County and the 15-acre El Jabili vineyard to the east, around their home. Grapes from the El Jabili vineyard previously went into Sanford wines. Both vineyards are organically farmed, which is important to the couple. The back labels for Alma Rosa wines contain their brief Manifesto, "We are committed to sustainable farming, our employees, and environmental considerations in the production of our wines...."
The current Alma Rosa releases are the winery's first. As you might expect, the Pinot Noirs are very good, especially the very limited 2004 La Encantada Vineyard Pinot Noir, which sells for about $47. (The 2004 Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noir is $31.) But the wine that intrigues me is the 2004 Chardonnay. It is sourced from grapes grown nearby around Los Alamos, where topographical differences such as gentler slopes exclude the area from the Sta. Rita Hills AVA, and thus the wine carries a Santa Barbara County appellation. It is a Chardonnay defined by its fruit rather than by oak, affordable enough to be your house wine and yet very high in quality.
This Chardonnay is fermented in stainless steel and aged for 14 months in neutral oak barrels, which accounts for its lack of oaky character. Lack of oak does not imply lack of flavor, however. You are likely to find ripe, rich flavors of apple and pear, a slight peach note and maybe even a suggestion of mango. These flavors are fairly intense but not excessively so. The phenolic component that oak tannins can bring to Chardonnay is missing here, but a note of minerality grounds the wine instead.
Two other aspects of this Chardonnay are fascinating. One is its fresh acidity, thanks to the lack of malolactic fermentation; this acidity drives the wine's length across the palate as well as its finish, which is extremely satisfying. The final element is the wine's amazingly rich, fluid, weighty texture. It's hard to find a descriptor for this texture. "Silky" is too insubstantial, "creamy" is too heavy. Even as the soft, rich texture envelopes your tongue, the wine's acidity cuts through, and prevents any heaviness.
When I tasted this wine with dinner, I happened to be serving the first fresh corn of the season (grilled inside its husk, my favorite preparation) and the combination was superb. Richard and Thekla love this wine with lobster, which makes perfect sense to me, considering the wine's lack of oaky character, which undermines many Chardonnay-and-lobster pairings. I wouldn't hesitate to serve it with any fatty fish, and I bet that acid-richness interplay would be fascinating with sashimi.
There's a lot of wine here for $19.
91 Points
