Aiming High in the Alexander Valley

<p>Winemaker Andrew Levi can’t believe his luck. As the grower and winemaker for Skipstone Ranch in the Alexander Valley, he’s been given the right site, the right help and the right amount of room to try his hand at making world-class cabernet sauvignon. So far, so good.</p><p>The inaugural 2005 vintage Skipstone Oliver’s Blend has just been released. There are only about 500 cases in all, a blend of mostly cabernet sauvignon (65 percent), merlot (25 percent), petite verdot and malbec (5 percent each). Oliver is the young son of Skipstone owners Fahri Diner and Jill Layman. Wine writer Robert Parker loved it (91 points), as did former Cyrus sommelier Jason Alexander.</p><p>“The wines are incredibly good,” said Alexander, “perhaps the best cabernet-based blend in Sonoma County.”</p><p>Diner and Layman were just looking for a place to get away from it all when they found the secluded, 200-acre amphitheater-shaped estate east of Geyserville. But when Diner, whose family roots trace back to Cyprus, saw the standing grove of olive trees on the route in, tears welled up in his eyes, and the property transformed from “maybe” to “meant to be.”</p><p>Olive trees were one thing — they do now make a Skipstone Ranch olive oil from those trees, like Diner’s ancestors in Cyprus have for generations before him. Grape-growing was another. Diner and Layman were wine drinkers and collectors but nowhere near qualified to figure out the finer art of grape growing.</p><p>They weren’t quite sure what to do with the existing 30-acre vineyard, one that had historically been farmed for quantity not quality, with blocks of everything from cabernet sauvignon to viognier to sangiovese. Prior to their takeover of the property in 2001, the vineyard had been yielding on average a weighty eight tons an acre.</p><p>But they sensed potential and set about finding the right people to help. First among these was Levi, who had been the enologist at Ferrari-Carano in the Dry Creek Valley and later promoted to help make the high-end cabs and syrahs for Ferrari-Carano’s mountain-estate project, PreVail.</p><p>“I knew that it would be different early on,” said Levi of his first walk around Skipstone. “I didn’t know if that meant better, (but) I knew it would be unique.”</p><p>At PreVail, Levi had worked with famed Napa Valley cabernet consultant Philippe Melka. Melka has since signed on to help Levi make the blends at Skipstone, Melka’s only Alexander Valley client and one of his only projects in Sonoma County.</p><p>At Skipstone, Levi feels he’s been given the means to go where perhaps few in Alexander Valley have gone before. And he firmly believes he’s found sacred ground.</p><p>“I’m a California winemaker, so of course I love California wines. This is my home,” he noted. “But I drink and revere a lot of the French Bordeaux. I do believe in a lot of those French wines and some California wines. There is something unique which is not about the barrel that’s used, not about the fermentation style. It’s about where the grapes were grown. That’s a very elusive thing to find.”</p><p>The bowl-shaped outpost that is Skipstone, in the northern tip of the Alexander Valley, has a faultline running right under it, which helps explain the range of soil types here, from clay-dominated dirt on the flatlands to rocky soil on the hills. After replanting — only 15 of the 30 acres are currently established — he now ekes out maybe a ton an acre, a half-ton off the hills.</p><p>Hoping to further enhance the quality of the grapes, the Skipstone team decided early on to farm the vineyard organically, reaching out to legendary Napa organic farming consultant “Amigo Bob” Cantisano.</p><p>“Amigo Bob comes in a whirlwind of dreadlocks and flip-flops,” Levi described, laughing. “I think he’s a genius. I think he can talk to plants. He’s a soils guy and if you’re going to go organic then you need to have healthy soils, but not too healthy, and he finds that balance. There isn’t a bug that he doesn’t know the scientific name of, what it eats, what eats it, bad guy, good guy.”</p><p>Levi says he has been able to scientifically measure improvements in his fruit as a result of going organic.</p><p>“One of the most important chemical components in must or grape juice is nitrogen,” he explains. “Yeast need nitrogen in order to ferment healthy. The nitrogen in my juices and must has gone up exponentially every year to the point where I almost don’t need to add any artificial nitrogen, which is unheard of. There’s a cascade effect chemically within the fruit to adjust to that. You have more balanced fruit.”</p><p>Virginie Boone is a freelance wine writer based in Sonoma County. She can be reached at virginieboone@yahoo.com or visit wineabout.pressdemocrat.com.</p>