Photo: Earl Richmond
Of the Land -Richard Sanford Builds his DREAM WineryBy Steve PitcherCrafting wines that capture the essence of a specific vineyard site is the goal of any winemaker. Rarely is the same consideration given to building a winery. But that was precisely what Richard Sanford had in mind when he hired the best talent he could find to build the winery he had been mentally constructing for decades.
Rather than a building imposed on the land, Sanford, acting as general contractor, envisioned a winery that would be of the land, fitting comfortably within its embrace. An environmentalist with a spiritual regard for nature, he broke ground for the new winery in early 2000 with the intent of drawing from his surroundings to build a structure with dignity.
Visiting the site, one is struck by the realization that Sanford, with the help of an assembly of the region's finest craftsmen, indeed, made his dream of building in harmony with the land into a reality.
My introductory encounter took place just before dusk, when a golden serenity spreads over the western Santa Ynez Valley and the sounds of man yield to the subtle whispers of nature - the soft singing of night birds and the gentle rustling of leaves in the evening breeze.
The light here is particularly remarkable as the day fades. Artists call the effect "sfumato" - the definition of form without abrupt outline, as one tone blends harmoniously into another. Bathed in this late afternoon light, the structures of the new winery complex are gently rounded and softened, much like the hills of the small valley that shelter the new Sanford complex on three sides.
Until now, Sanford Winery, founded in 1981 by Sanford and his wife, Thekla, was a winery in name only. Its Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs were made initially in a rented winery facility in Edna Valley and, from 1983, when Bruno D'Alfonso became the winemaker, at its own "interim facility," a warehouse in Buellton. All that one could find when driving west out of Buellton in search of the Sanford spot on the winery tour map were offices and a delightfully rustic tasting room on 780 acres at Rancho El Jabalí. It's here that the Sanfords make their home and tend a 7-acre estate vineyard.
"I've long had a permit to build a winery on this property [Rancho El Jabalí]," Sanford notes, "but I refrained from doing so because it would fill up the tiny valley here, and I'm uncomfortable with that."
Instead, the heart of the enterprise that Sanford now calls Sanford Winery & Vineyards (reflecting his acquisition within the last six years of more than 200 acres actually planted to grapes for estate vineyards) lies at Rancho La Rinconada.
In 1995, Sanford acquired the 485-acre property, which lies about 4.5 miles from the tasting room and a short distance west of the famed Sanford & Benedict Vineyard, "from three elderly sisters." In the interim, 120 of its acres have been planted to pinot noir and chardonnay, with an emphasis on clonal diversity. A leasehold acquisition just west of Rinconada, the 120-acre Rancho La Viña, is currently being prepared for planting.
In the center of La Rinconada, marked by a stand of weathered Monterey Cypress and occupied by a few ramshackle farm buildings, Sanford found the ideal site for his winery. "These old trees sheltered the only structures on the property besides a barn quite some distance away," he said, pointing to the trees that were probably planted in the 1920s, "so I determined I could plant the vineyard and build the winery without removing any trees in the process. That's very important to me - leaving the land as much as possible in its natural state. Here, it was essentially a matter of replacing existing buildings with new ones."
The construction, which Sanford had hoped would be completed in 18 months, was drawn out as a consequence of his determination to use native materials to the greatest extent possible. "I love the integrity of natural materials," he explains, "and adobe is the natural building element for this part of California - it's the 'appropriate technology' for construction."
As much as possible, Sanford integrated his strong environmental principles and elements of certain Eastern philosophies - particularly the Chinese concept of Tao, which emphasizes simplicity - into the construction. "Life should flow like water, which finds ways around obstructions once its course is determined," he muses. "Too often, we separate ourselves from nature, yet we're all part of it together. I feel that, despite human nature, we need to live in harmony with nature. That's the ultimate goal."
He brought this abiding philosophy to his meetings with consulting architect Robert Mehl of Santa Ynez, and the various individual contractors working on the project. "There are lots of attempts to make a thing look like something it's not, rather than to make it what it actually is," Sanford observes.
In constructing the winery, its makers drew on the region's history as well as its physical elements. The finished complex looks much like an early-California mission, constructed from 100,000 adobe bricks made from sand and clay dug from the property and fashioned by hand on site by a team of brick makers. "Five workers made 1,000 adobe bricks a day," Sanford says.
When Santa Barbara County building officials objected at the outset to his plans for using adobe, citing seismic concerns, Sanford enlisted Fred Webster, an engineer who devised a method of anchoring the bricks between the foundation wall and the board-formed, concrete bond beam laid horizontally atop the adobe wall with a series of threaded metal rods set in plastic sleeves. "This gave us the necessary compression from the stem - or foundation - wall to the ceiling to make the adobe walls secure in and of themselves," Sanford explains. "This is an earth structure with seismic stability."
To learn the secrets of adobe brick-making, Sanford attended classes at Joe Tibbit's adobe school in El Bosque, Arizona, where he also discovered that adding asphalt emulsion to the sand-clay mix waterproofs the bricks so they won't melt in the rain.
Adobe walls act as natural insulation for temperature control, which is particularly important for the barrel hall, where the wines age in oak. After the sun goes down, fans draw in cool night air and circulate it through the storage area.
Indigenous stone also was used generously in the winery's construction: flagstones came from the nearby town of Lompoc, and sandstone for the exposed foundation wall was quarried from neighboring Rancho San Julian. "Great blocks of stone were trucked to the site and then broken up into smaller, more manageable pieces," Sanford explains. "It was a laborious process, but the results are worth it."
The traditional red clay roof tiles, emblematic of mission-style architecture, were produced in Tecate, Mexico.
For lumber, Sanford was fortunate to secure a supply of old-growth timber from a dismantled Klickitat, Washington, sawmill built in 1912 on the banks of the Columbia River. The reclaimed wood was shipped to Rancho La Rinconada where it was milled into huge beams and trusses. Particularly impressive is its reincarnation in the open-sided quarter-ellipse that shelters the requisite array of stainless steel storage tanks.
In keeping with Sanford's minimalist philosophy, the new winery functions with a state-of-the-art gravity-flow system. Rather than pumping wine from tank to tank during the racking process, a hydraulic lift raises four large settling tanks three stories up, allowing gravity to naturally drain the wine from one tank to another. "This makes for a gentle wine movement, which is particularly beneficial in the production of Pinot Noir," Sanford says.
Gravity flow also is used for the winery's water supply, which was sourced in the hills above the site where a natural spring was tapped by boring horizontally into the hillside. The water flows - without the aid of a pump - from the mouth of a likeness of Bacchus into a fanciful, stone spring house and then by gravity into three large cisterns in a rise above the winery, where it is drawn off as needed.
In addition to Bacchus on the hill, Sanford has incorporated two other evocative symbols in the winery complex, suggesting an inclusionary trinity. Housed in an ornate altar that Sanford rescued from a New York City architectural salvage company is a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico. "Most of our winery workers are very religious, and this provides them with a shrine where they can place candles and otherwise draw comfort as their faith provides." In the courtyard sits a statue of Buddha, gazing directly through one of the two cellar doors. "These statues 'ensoul' the place," Sanford says.
Hand-hewn details at every turn make it apparent that a great deal of money was spent on the project. "Our initial estimates were well short of the mark due to the unique construction approach and the building materials," recalls Sanford, who declines to disclose the cost. "I like to say that the plans alone cost $2,500 per pound," he jokes.
"This new facility will bring a certain notoriety to Sanford Winery, but that's not its purpose," Sanford says. "Honoring the land is what's important. We've tried to be sensitive to natural materials in their appropriate forms. Here, there's no illusion."
The new winery, which was nearing completion in July, will be ready in time for crush, although work will continue on such projects as landscaping with native flora and adding finishing touches that are in keeping with the principles of Feng Shui.
"The whole winery was built on the principles of Feng Shui," Sanford explains. "This Chinese school of thought puts great emphasis on the placement of objects - whether furniture in a room or buildings on a campus - in relationship to other objects in the same environment. The goal is to stimulate good energy flow - chi - to create harmony in any given space.
"It should be finished in my lifetime," the 60-year-old Sanford says with a chuckle.
When one considers the great wines that he and Bruno D'Alfonso have turned out from a warehouse, it is tempting to think that those produced at Sanford's exquisitely built dream winery will be even more profound.
Based in San Francisco, Contributing Editor Steve Pitcher is vice president of the Vintners Club and president of the Bay Area chapter of the German Wine Society. He can be reached via e-mail at wine2words@aol.com.
