By Laura Ness

The last time I inquired about a vineyard bearing a woman’s name (Laura’s Vineyard in Paso Robles), it turned out the place was named after a cat.  More specifically, after a feline well over the limit on her 9 Lives credit card account. So, I wasn’t sure what to expect on this one.  Happily, Elizabeth Vineyards in the Redwood Valley of Mendocino County turns out to be named after a very vivacious and charming woman named Elizabeth Foster, who prefers to be called Betty. The first thing about Betty that you encounter is that smile – bright as a neon OPEN sign, and as wide as the grille of a vintage Pontiac. And then, there are her eyes: brilliant blue piercers that could match Paul Newman’s, lumen for lumen.

Meet the Queen

Wearing tropically bright clothing to match both her eyes and her personality, Betty greets everyone with genuine hospitality, remembers your name even if you only say it once, and can lift a 5-liter bottle with one hand as deftly as wine jockeys half her age. This woman has more class in her little finger than the Queen of England has in her entire be-gloved royal wave. With that trademark twinkle in her eye, Betty pours a glass of her luscious citrus bomb Sauvignon Blanc and toasts her rich heritage. “I’ve been drinking wine since I can remember,” she laughs. “We kids always had wine – half water, half wine—with dinner. It was never this good! My father made wine, mostly from Carignane and Cabernet, and it was pretty rough – even the adults watered it down!”

She’s certainly come a long way, baby. Elizabeth Vineyards makes only two wines, Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel, in small lots, with a case production of less than 1k yearly. One of the best California Sauvignon Blancs you’ll find, and at a bargain price of $12, the Elizabeth Vineyards SB was a Gold Medal winner at the 2003 Orange County Fair. The citrus and grapefruit flavors are brilliant, and the finish crisp, and long. The recently released 2002 Elizabeth Vineyards Zinfandel is smooth and even, with lots of sweet fruit, good acid, and soft, ripe tannins. It’s a restrained wine that doesn’t go overboard.

Meet The Family: Three Generations

Betty’s son Eric is the vineyard manager for the entire Elizabeth Vineyards operation. Her namesake granddaughter, “Miss Elizabeth,” handles marketing and sales. She’s got her grandmother’s easy smile and warm personality. When not managing the retail side of the shop, she waitresses at the local steakhouse in Calpella. Eric has been around agriculture all his life, and has literally grown up with the wine growing industry. He originally worked for Beckstoffer, who is the largest solo grape grower in California. Today he manages the vineyards that thrive in the prime grape-growing areas of the family ranch in the Redwood Valley north of Ukiah.

The Making of Elizabeth Vineyards

The Foster family has owned the primo piece of Redwood Valley property from which Betty’s renowned Sauvignon and Zinfandel grapes are sourced, since 1969, but her personal roots here go as deep as the soil. She was born and raised right here in this sunny, Mediterranean-warm climate near Ukiah. When Betty and her late husband bought the 216-acre ranch, there were only about 12 acres of vines, mostly Carignane and Zinfandel. Over the years, they slowly upped the production to 90 acres, selling most of the fruit to well-known wineries throughout California. For example, the Petite Sirah currently goes to Lolonis, the Zin goes mainly to Dynamite and R H Philips, and most of the Cabernet goes to Clos du Val, as well as to R H Philips.

The first wines under the Elizabeth Vineyards label were produced in 1987.  Son Eric recalls, “Mom started making wine to show what we could do with the fruit.  It brought us some good contracts. We were with Mondavi for 15 years.”

Out with the Chard, In With the Sauvignon

In 1995, seeing a glut of Chardonnay grapes, Elizabeth decided to graft over to Sauvignon Blanc. It was a good decision. “I had been making Chardonnay to showcase our vineyard, but seeing the glut, I dumped that and started making Zinfandel in its stead. It goes better with food anyway!”

Ever the marketing power, the Robert Mondavi Winery used Elizabeth Vineyards Sauvignon in its popular Fumé Blanc. The Fumé moniker was invented to help Americans cope with the then perceived difficulty of pronouncing “Sauvignon,” (a derivative of the French word sauvage, which means wild), a problem that has long since been overcome by the popularity of Cabernet. Interestingly enough, these two are rather closely related, as it turns out that Cabernet Sauvignon owes its genetic origins to a cross between Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Franc.

Out in the Vineyards

The vineyards are about 1100 feet elevation, in sloping hillside soil. Planted on vigorous St. George rootstock, these prolific vines grow in what is known as the California sprawl, which makes the acres of Sauvignon Blanc look like a wild, shoulder high orchard. The fruit at the very beginning of August is tasting pretty much like the wine you’ll eventually savor out of the bottle. The clusters are small and uneven. Eric explains that this varietal lends itself to machine picking, but he exclusively hand picks, even though it is very labor intensive. “One machine can do the work of 100 men in a 12-hour day. But California sprawl gets busted up by machines. I need 40 guys to pick a truckload of Sauvignon Blanc by 2 pm.” An equivalent amount of Zin can be picked by a crew of 12 by noon, because of cluster size.

Most Sauvignon Blanc is grown in dense and heavy soil, but this is very red soil, with good drainage, more suited to red varieties. Here, they get five tons to the acre max, compared with nine to ten tons on bench land. Because they have only ten acres of SB, it’s worth the manual labor.

Eric anticipates picking the Sauvignon Blanc by Sept 1st. Even the teensiest berries will ripen up by then, and no fruit will need to be dropped. The flavors are so rich and consistent, there’s not worry at all. Zin will most likely be picked at the end of September, with Cabernet and Petite Sirah following towards the end of October. The Petite is tasting fantastic (dark chocolate truffles with dusty cocoa),  and it’s just beginning to ripen. Sometimes you wonder how anybody can resist the temptation to just pick the grapes and eat them

Oh yeah, there’s that fermentation thing. Eric explains the process of making the SB wine. It is immediately crushed and pressed off, right into stainless for fermentation, where it undergoes full malolactic. Then off it goes into totally neutral French oak for six months before bottling. The result is worth the delayed gratification.

Elizabeth Vineyards
http://www.elizabethvineyards.com/