I didn’t know much about the Santa Cruz Mountains until I interviewed Mark Greenspan.
It doesn’t get much better than sitting with someone trained in terroir and viticulture, and Dr. Mark Greenspan, of Advanced Viticulture, is as good as it gets. I wanted to learn about the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA because I attended the World Of Pinot Noir this spring, and sat in on the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA discussion. As people discussed their place on the mountain, I learned that there’s a lot going on in the Santa Cruz Mountains, not much of which I previously knew.
If you read Wine Business Monthly, you’re familiar with Mark’s writings. If you don’t read WBM, Mark has two decades of viticultural scientific research and field experience. He’s provided viticultural leadership to winery estate vineyards and to winery grape suppliers, while managing one of the largest portfolios of viticultural research projects in the private industry sector. Mark has worked side-by-side with leading viticulturists, vineyard managers, winemakers, and agricultural technologists, while keeping closely in touch with academic research.
Mark’s eclectic background includes a Masters degree in Horticulture/Viticulture and a Doctorate in Agricultural Engineering, both from the University of California, Davis. He is one of very few private practitioners who have been elected as an honorary member of Gamma Sigma Delta, the Agricultural Honor Society.
He’s regarded as one of the world’s leading experts in wine grape irrigation and has written scientific and trade journal articles on the subject. In addition to his command of grapevine irrigation practices, he has extensive experience in vineyard mineral nutrition, crop load management, vineyard uniformity, grape maturation, weather, climate, and viticultural technologies.
I was honored to have some of his valuable time to learn about the Santa Cruz Mountains. My intereview with Mark Greenspan follows:
[Q] Santa Cruz Mountains is not like other wine regions. Why?
[A] It doesn’t have a high density of vineyards and wineries, which can either market separately or market together. And in the Santa Cruz Mountains, they don’t have the density. They’re spread out and are few and far between. There’s power in numbers, and if they break it down, there’s only going to be a handful of members in each area. Some vineyards, for instance, have two or three different soils within just one vineyard on one property. There’s a tremendous amount of variability. Different kinds of soils: sand stone, to clay, to loamy soils. There’s a tremendous amount of variability within one property. I always ask why wineries focus on soils so much. I’m more of a climate oriented AVA and terroir believer. I believe climate has much more affect on differences for a region.
[Q] Santa Cruz Mountains is a rather large AVA. How does this work in the AVA scheme of things?
[A] That’s not a bad thing or a good thing. It’s defined partially by elevations, based on which side of the mountain a vineyard is on. That’s how they drew the boundaries. West side, cooler side, it’s a higher/lower (?) elevation than the other side, the warmer side (I think). They adjusted it so that it’s roughly at that level where you could grow grapes, where it’s not too cold (it’s too cold near the ocean). And as you go up the mountain it gets a little warmer and stays a little warmer at night. And, on the inland, eastern side of the mountain, it’s warmer, and they have elevation defined, because as you get to the valley, it’s a lot warmer, and it takes a lot of the characteristics out of the AVA, which is generally a cooler climate region as compared to other AVA regions in the state.
[Q] What are the climates like here?
[A] There are really two distinct climate sides of the mountain: there’s the cooler Pinot Noir side, and there’s the warmer Cabernet side. Obviously there are other varieties that go along with those sides, but there are two distinct climatologies. One is on the eastern side, and has less direct ocean influences, but is more influenced by the San Francisco Bay. This means the air warms more before it gets there and stays warmer. Plus there’s the simple fact that there are two aspects: one is facing east, and one’s facing west.
[Q] Can you explain this really unique region?
[A] The only other region that I can think of that’s similar is the Sonoma Coast, only because it’s a large AVA also and runs along the Pacific Ocean. It really doesn’t have the same elevation, though, but it’s definitely different.
[Q] Tell me about the Santa Cruz Mountains.
[A] The highest point in the Santa Cruz Mountain range is the Loma Prieta Peak at 3,786 feet. The mountains are largely the result of a compressive uplift, caused by a leftward bend of the San Andreas Fault’s geophysical and climatic factors. The appellation encompasses the Santa Cruz Mountain range, from Half Moon Bay in the north, to Mount Madonna in the south. The east and west boundaries are defined by elevation, extending down to 800 feet in the east and 400 feet in the west. This makes it a very unique AVA with this amount of elevation.
The only other AVA I can think of that’s comparable is up in Mendocino in the Yorkville Highlands [between 1,000 and 2,200 feet in elevation], which is defined by elevation also, but doesn’t have as much coastal influences, either.
[Q] What other factors make this region so unique?
[A] I think it’s safe to say that the Santa Cruz Mountain range has two things going for it that define it: one is proximity to the ocean and the second is elevation. It’s really hard to think of another appellation that has those two in such dramatic fashion.
We may not have that appellation anywhere else in the world that has these features.
Other areas that I might question:
- Atlantic is quite different
- Europe has very different climate patterns
- Chile is said to be close to California climate, but they mostly farm on the coastal plains
[Q] There’s talk about regions within the Santa Cruz Mountains. Have you heard about this movement?
[A] No, I haven’t heard about this. Santa Cruz Mountains is probably not nearly as well known as it should be. It needs a good storyteller to get the word out, but not dilute its potential by fragmenting it before the name is instantly synonymous with wine, first. It’s important to keep it as a unified AVA for economic purposes.
Next, Part 2…
Sante Archangeli Family Wines (John Benedetti) makes some very nice Pinot Noir out of the Santa Cruz Mountains
The Santa Cruz Mountains is defined by its elevation above a minimum level. 400′ is a very general boundary around the perimeter at the lowest elevation. But if we’re talking about a mountain appellation we should be defining it by its vertical elevation range, which in the SC Mts. is as high as about 3000′. Our vineyards can be found from this low 400′ perimeter to 2600′ (Ridge Montebello; and Muns Vineyard on the Loma Prieta ridge with Pinot Noir). There are numerous vineyards along Summit Road and extending north along Skyline at 2000′ or so).
What is common about our mountain appellation is the irregular terrain and the high percentage of vertical terrain compared to relatively flat land on valley floors or more gentle foothills. This terrain affects weather patterns, e.g. how a storm behaves as it moves over the appellation. And, this vertical aspect constrains the size of our vineyards and the overall planted acreage.
What makes the Santa Cruz Mountains so complex is that it is difficult to make clear definitions. Yes, in general it is cooler on the coastal side where Pinot Noir predominates; and warmer on the easterly, San Francisco Bay side, where Cabernet is grown. But Pinot Noir is also grown a little farther inland off the coast where fog events make it possible, for example at Thomas Fogarty and Varner where fog blankets the ridges in summer. This is where the myriad microclimates in the mountain terrain come in. Above Saratoga, Mount Eden grows both Pinot Noir (where a finger of fog stretches in from the coast) and Cabernet.
About the subregions: several years ago we conducted a tasting with AppellationAmerica.com and Clark Smith in which we tasted through dozens of pinot noirs, chardonnays and cabs. We made an attempt to put some organization to an otherwise unwieldy and somewhat confusing AVA. In the process, we identified several major ‘sub-regions’, discerning distinct flavor profiles for each (especially in the pinot noirs) as follows:
1. Skyline
2. Saratoga/Los Gatos
3. Summit Rd.
4. The Coastal Foothills
5. Ben Lomond Mountain (which is its own AVA)
6. Corralitos/Pleasant Valley
A lot of the growers feel that they are in their very own sub-region, distinct from any other. It is very difficult to draw boxes around sub-regions, and we didn’t even try to do this. This is the complexity of the mountain terrain and microclimates – and one of the reasons why there is such diversity in our resulting wines.
In all of the Santa Cruz Mts., encompassing over 400,000 acres, there is only some 1500 acres or so of vineyard. That acreage is growing, but it’s by tens of acres, not hundreds. We have as much vineyard acreage in the entire appellation as a single vineyard might have in the Central Coast. Because our vineyards are so small they are typically surrounded by native chaparral and forest, an important aspect to the terroir that is reflected in our wines.
We do experience frost. I can’t say how widespread this is, but at Muns Vineyard at 2600′ on Loma Prieta we typically have frost every Spring. The cold air flows downhill, but it gets stuck in pockets in the rolling mountain terrain of the vineyard. At 2000′ and above on the coastal side we get huge temperature swings, as much as 40 degrees, from the 80s into the 40s at night during the summer.
The Santa Cruz Mountains straddles the San Andreas fault, with the North American Plate on the east, and the Pacific Plate on the west. Soils are varied (decomposed rock, clay, loam, limestone).
You can see more about all this and the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA on the website of the Viticulture Assn. of the Santa Cruz Mountains at http://www.vascm.org.
Mary Lindsay
Muns Vineyard
April 28, 2014
Thanks for adding your rich content, Mary.