Placing a Bet on Italian Grapes in California
Written by:
Eric Asimov, New York Times
Kevin Harvey of Rhys Vineyards makes terrific pinot noirs. Now he sees nebbiolo and two Sicilian varieties as great options in a warming climate.
The 10 acres of nebbiolo growing on this remote ridge about 25 miles west of Geyserville and 10 miles from the Pacific in northern Sonoma County, make the vineyard unusual enough in California. The other grapes make it positively singular.
No other vineyard in the country but this one, as far as I can tell, has blocks of carricante and nerello mascalese, the two most significant white and red grapes grown on Mount Etna in Sicily.
One grower, Kevin Harvey, a former venture capitalist turned wine entrepreneur, is wagering that here in California, he can produce a great nebbiolo, which has proved difficult anywhere beyond the grape’s home territory in northern Italy. Not only that, he is betting he can make world-class carricantes and nerello mascaleses, which may never have been tried outside of Sicily.
The Centennial vineyard is also an effort to determine whether, as some people believe, California is full of great wine terroirs that have not yet been discovered.
Mr. Harvey’s first wine investment, Rhys Vineyards, which produces exquisite pinot noirs, has paid off handsomely in terms of the quality of the wines and their critical reception. But the track record of Italian varieties in California, or anywhere outside of Italy, is not great.
Yet Mr. Harvey is applying the same tenacity and obsessive attention to detail to this project as he did with Rhys 20 years ago, when he combed the back roads of the Santa Cruz Mountains, looking for rocky slopes that he believed would make exceptional sites for vineyards.
