Rococo's Chenin Blanc Journey

Rococo began in 2016 when Natalie Brown unexpectedly stumbled upon four rows of old vine Chenin Blanc vines sandwiched in the middle of a Chardonnay and a Merlot block. The Chenin stood out because the plants stand a few feet taller and the trunks are double the diameter of the neighboring blocks. It turns out these vines were the last remaining of an original fifty acres planted in 1974.

After walking a few vines into the row Natalie realized this wasn’t like any other vineyard she had been in before. There were two different fruiting zones of interplanted vines, one at hip height and one above her head. There didn’t appear to be a graft union and the vineyard manager confirmed that they were indeed on their own roots. She also realized that there were some new vines being trained out of the ground from a cane planted from an adjacent vine. This is a little used technique in California called layering. All of these attributes alone would make a vineyard unique but all three together added up to a truly individual plot.

According to the vineyard manager, the grapes had been purchased on and off from a few different small producers over the years and what wasn’t sold was turned into bulk wine. At the time of the visit the fruit was tentatively committed, although nothing was set in stone, and if Natalie wanted a few tons she would be able to purchase them. It took a week or two of deliberation. Chenin Blanc wasn’t exactly on her radar, but ultimately it seemed like an exciting opportunity to produce something original. Like all old school dealings in the wine industry there was no contract involved, just a handshake, which was the first step on what has become a mild obsession. 

In 2018, Natalie traveled to Clarksburg, a region in California that is championing Chenin Blanc, and sourced a few tons of fruit from a twenty-six-year-old vineyard. The following vintage, she added another site: Shell Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles. Shell Creek grows vines planted by the Sinton family in the early 70’s, and has one of the largest holdings of Chenin Blanc in the area with about twenty-five acres. 

The experience of producing Chenin from multiple different regions made her believe that terroir, compared to winemaking style, had an equal if not greater effect on the underlying character of the wine. The desire to understand more about this grape was a slow burning fire. 

Having tasted through most examples of the grape from domestic producers and the few international bottles that are imported, it became apparent that in order to gain further insight an expedition to a wine region outside of California was required. The Loire and South Africa were the obvious choices: the former being the birth place of the grape and the latter being the new world vanguard. After a bit of deliberation South Africa was decided upon for four reasons.  Firstly, there is far more Chenin in that country than anywhere else in the world. Second, South Africa and California are climatically more similar than the growing conditions of the Loire, so greater parallels could be drawn. Third, producers there have a similar history with the grape so the cumulative native knowledge would be a huge resource. Lastly, the ability to communicate in English would allow for a much easier and greater flow of information in the technical subtleties of growing and vinification. Natalie and her husband, Brian, packed their bags for South Africa in January 2020. The nearly three-week trip was extremely eye opening and educational. Chenin was sampled every day of the sabbatical from multiple different regions, in an array of styles, from producers massive to micro and at price points of every market segment. By the end of the visit the experience felt like merely an introduction into the winegrowing culture of South Africa and subsequent ventures will certainly occur. One key take away from the trip was how great a degree the soil has on vines and to what a degree those soils imparted distinctive qualities on the wine. Natalie wondered if the same held true in California, so a pursuit ensued: locating Chenin Blanc in as widely different soil types as possible.

Hunting down Chenin Blanc vineyards in California is not as easy as it might seem. Less than two percent of the planted area in California is to Chenin and much of that is located in the Delta and the Central Valley where it is used for large production white blends. The grape is not widely followed by critics or journalists and not on the radar of most wine buyers or consumers. This means there is scarce information on vineyard sources. If one does a Google search for Chenin Blanc in California, the hits are scant.

Due to the relative obscurity of the grape and the tiny demand by consumers, Chenin Blanc is not actively being planted in California on a large scale. The limited number of new plantings led Natalie, by necessity, to work with older vineyards, many of which are planted on their own roots. Most of these parcels are tucked away in small, nearly forgotten pockets of larger vineyards. A handful of the vineyards are still farmed by the families that planted the vines.

  The first vintage of Rococo was sourced from a single site in Los Alamos. When one first works with a vineyard it is hard to know what one is going to get, especially when there is little wine to try from the site. Because of this, Natalie determined it was best to approach the wine from two different angles, hoping to see what cellar techniques best expressed the character of the vineyard. The two bottlings she produced were modeled after classic styles from the birthplace of Chenin Blanc, the Loire. The two wines were an early bottled demi-sec version as well as a dry sur lie style that she kept reserved in the cellar for eight months. The results were drastically different, and a Pandora’s box of sorts had been opened reveling the chameleon like nature of Chenin.

The Chenin Blanc vineyards Rococo works with generally ripen later than other white varieties. Pick decisions are based solely on flavor. Brix and acids are rarely measured prior to harvest. Once in the winery the fruit is destemmed then basket pressed without any press cuts. Fermentation is done in stainless steel and neutral oak with a mixture of native and inoculated yeast. Letting Nature take its course, the yeast decide when fermentation is done. Sometimes this leaves some residual sugar in the wine but most of the Chenin lots ferment to dryness. Malolactic fermentation usually does not occur and if it does it is generally does not complete.

By keeping all of the fermentations relatively standard it allows us to highlight the differences in terroir by minimizing variables in the cellar. In the past two vintages there have been two exceptions to this rule. In 2019 Natalie decided to split the Los Alamos vineyard into two lots. The first lot was treated in the stainless steel program as described above. For the second lot, the juice was put into a new French oak puncheon and fermented to dryness. This wine was left on the lees for fourteen months and bâttonage was performed periodically over that time. Malolactic fermentation was discouraged using a small addition of sulfur at the conclusion of primary fermentation. The results are expressively rich. 

In 2020 Natalie made the decision to emulate Chenin from the Swartland region of South Africa. There, many producers pick when the grapes are lower in sugar and higher in acid. The wines are fermented dry in neutral oak and malolactic fermentation is encouraged, allowing the natural acidity to mellow and the wines to be bottled unfiltered without the risk of secondary fermentation occurring. The Jurassic vineyard naturally lent itself to this model so the program was performed.

Chenin Blanc was widely planted in California in the early years of wine production in the state. In 1976, it was the fourth most yielding grape in California, behind Grenache, Carignane, and French Colombard, and accounted for 24% of white tons crushed. 

By 1996 its tonnage began to drop significantly. It had gone down from 250,000 tons crushed five years earlier to about half that amount, and only accounted for 15% of the white tons crushed, 7% of all wine tons crushed. From 2001 to 2006, about half of the remaining Chenin was replanted to other varieties, and only 75,000 tons were crushed (2.4% of wine tons). Chenin has been in slow decline since, while the total tons crushed in California has steadily increased. In 2016 there were about 45,000 tons of Chenin crushed, which was 1.1% of crushed wine grapes in the state. 

On our twenty-five acre estate in the Willow Creek District of Paso Robles, we planted one acre of Chenin Blanc in a low, heavy clay loam section of the property. Given the vigor of the young vines that we have already witnessed, we anticipate that dry-farming the site will be the best way to mitigate over-cropping and farm sustainably. We look forward to including a Willow Creek Chenin Blanc in our future line-up of Rococo California Chenins.