Santa Lucia Highlands: New Releases

The Santa Lucia Highlands, a roughly 12-mile stretch of windswept, high-altitude, east-facing vineyards 15 miles inland from the Monterey coast, boasts nearly 6,100 acres of some of the New World’s most prized Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vineyards, with Syrah on the upswing. The success rate for Pinot, in particular, is uncommonly high. It’s pretty tough to find many below average wines these days. But it’s also difficult to find serious values, as the region is pretty much devoted to bottling premium and super-premium wines, making it a veritable Gold Coast of California viticulture. In fact, other than the Napa Valley I’d bet that the Santa Lucia Highlands, which was first planted for commercial wine production in 1973, can lay claim to commanding the highest average price per bottle of any American winegrowing region.

The good news is that the quality of most wines warrants their prices, especially in topnotch vintages like 2013 and 2012, which are the years that I focused on during my late-June visit to the region. Both of these harvests yielded abundant quantities of clean, ripe fruit from benign growing seasons. And with rare exception, the red wines are awfully easy to drink now, but there’s no question that even entry-level bottlings of red wines have the stuffing for at least several years of aging.

The 2013 Growing Season

Adam Franscioni, whose family owns some of the most prized vineyard in the region, including Rosella’s, Sierra Mar and Garys’, told me that “the fruit in 2013 was pristine, plain and simple.” A warm, dry winter allowed the vines to flower earlier than normal and the weather remained kind through what turned out to be one of the earliest harvests ever recorded. “There wasn’t pressure to pick early,” Franscioni said “but the fruit was just ready to go.” The producers who I spoke with think that the wines have the structure and depth to age well, over the next decade, for sure, but there’s plenty of upfront appeal for the impatient. Adam Lee, who makes wines under the Siduri and Novy labels as well as overseeing production for the Franscioni family’s ROAR label, described the vintage as “one of those rare years where you actually get quality and quantity, which is kind of the unicorn of wine growing.” He added that the ‘13s “have always led with their fruit and don’t seem like they’re ever going to go dumb,” which should make them ideal for wine lovers who are short on storage, or, as mentioned above, patience, and restaurants that place wines on their list within minutes of delivery – which means pretty much all of them nowadays.

Gary Franscioni’s striking Sierra Mar Vineyard