He pulls onto the soft shoulder and kills the engine. Emerging from the car, he leaves the door ajar and stealthily makes his way through the vineyard, scooping up a cane here, a cane there. His foray completed, he deposits the booty in the car's trunk and makes his getaway, with no one the wiser.

Years later, his vineyard full of plants cloned from those few purloined canes, he basks in the glory of accolades for his highly sought after Pinot Noir.

This scenario and variations on its theme have been recounted by more than a few California winegrowers, although most are reluctant to be quoted in print on the subject. This is understandable, inasmuch as the free importation of grapevine material from foreign sources is strictly prohibited by federal quarantine statutes.

Violators risk jail-time, or at least a hefty fine. Previous federal law limited fines to a maximum of $1,000, but under the tougher, new, federal Plant Protection Act, which became effective just last June, today's smuggler could face a fine of up to $50,000 for the first offense, up to $250,000 per violation for subsequent offenses and a maximum of $500,000 for all violations adjudicated in a single administrative proceeding. If convicted in federal court, the punishment is up to one year imprisonment.

California's agriculture industry lobbied heavily for the new legislation. "This wasn't something dreamed up by USDA," says Larry Hawkins, a spokesman for the department. "Organized agricultural interests in California weighed in heavily for a drastic increase in fines and stepped up enforcement because of the tremendous risk posed by plant smuggling to the state's $30 billion agricultural business."

It's not illegal to import foreign plant material, however, provided it goes through a designated quarantine facility. The elements of California's plant quarantine system have been in place since the early 1950s. The modern day Grapevine Registration and Certification Program is administered at UC-Davis by the Foundation Plant Material Service. It is here that imported cuttings are documented, inspected and treated to eliminate any trace of disease, and finally propagated in a controlled environment - a process that can take up to six years, sometimes longer in difficult cases.

Eager to sidestep delays, impatient growers have historically resorted to smuggling. Not just pinot noir cuttings from Burgundy, although they seem to account for most of the stories, but also grapevine material from Bordeaux, the Rhône Valley and Italy.

Cloning mythical wine

In viticultural parlance, a "clone" is a plant that has been reproduced without a seed - from a bud or a shoot - an asexual approach that theoretically guarantees that the offspring will be biologically identical to the parent.

A "clonal selection" is the practice of selecting a single superior plant in the vineyard and then taking cuttings from this vine for propagation of more identical vines to spread the superiority around the vineyard.

Usually cuttings are made from segments of the cane and placed in a nursery to propagate, with the resulting plants transferred to the vineyard in the second year. Several dozen clones of pinot noir have been identified in the Côte d'Or alone, and there are several hundred throughout all the regions of the world where the variety is grown.

At least three present-day growers (there are probably others) have admitted for the record that they smuggled cuttings - so-called "suitcase clones" - into California. All of the escapades took place many years ago.

Josh Jensen, owner of Calera Wine Company and a Pinot pioneer in California, admittedly dabbled in what he calls "midnight vineyard supply." In his case, it was a combination of self-service and permitted entry.

In the early 1970s, Jensen spent a couple of years in Burgundy, where he apprenticed himself to several winemakers, including those at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Domaine Dujac. "I became quite friendly with the owners," he recounts, "and eventually worked up the courage to ask them for cuttings I could take back to California. This was in 1973, before I had any vineyard land of my own. They said, 'You know what you want and where to find it. Go ahead and make your cuttings, just don't butcher the vines.'" Having secured their blessing, Jensen says that he was "mighty careful what I cut."

Getting his valuable bundle of sticks home presented a bigger hurdle.

"I got the cuttings into California wrapped in wet cotton and stuffed into my coat," Jensen admits. He is coy about which vineyard - one or more - provided the plant material: "I worked with Dujac, DRC, Comte de Vogüé and Clair Dau," he allows, declining to be more specific. "I took the cuttings to a friend's vineyard, and we were able to get the buds grafted successfully onto some rootstock that was already growing. We ended up with 25 live plants, which served as the 'mother block' for my plantings at Calera in 1975."

This was the beginning of what has become known as the very successful "Calera clone" of pinot noir, which today can be found in many other vineyards. "I gave away some budwood to those who asked," he recounts, "and for a while, I sold some, too."

Other Californians also are stepping into the confessional. A recent smuggler's mea culpa, as reported in Rod Smith's Los Angeles Times column (September 27, 2000), came from Al Brounstein, the 80-year-old owner of Diamond Creek Vineyards in Napa Valley, who regaled the audience at a vertical tasting of his wines last August with the story of how in 1966, he shipped cuttings from two of the five premier cru châteaux in Bordeaux first to Mexico City, then to Tijuana and finally to a private airstrip near Rosarito Beach. Then, by private plane, the bundles were flown one at a time across the border. "It took seven trips to get them all to Brounstein's fledgling Napa Valley estate," Smith noted.

"I never used to be able to talk about this," Smith quotes Brounstein as saying, "but now it's beyond the statute of limitations, so I can tell everybody how I started out as a smuggler."

Not so, says Kathleen Harvey, program supervisor for nursery, seed and cotton in the California Department of Food and Agriculture. "There is no statute of limitations on smuggling," she asserts.

The French owners allowed Brounstein to take the cuttings on the condition that he would never reveal the sources, Smith reported. Brounstein's word is his bond: "My attorney has that information," he told Smith. "Maybe someday it will be revealed."

At least Brounstein had permission to take the material. Many acted furtively, including Gary Pisoni, who established a renowned pinot noir vineyard in the Santa Lucia Highlands region of Monterey County in the early 1980s. He admitted as much to Thomas Garrett of The Wine Spectator, who quoted him in the September 15, 1999, issue of the magazine concerning his 1982 caper. During a visit to the great domaines of Burgundy, he noticed that some of the vineyards - including La Tâche - had cuttings lying on the ground; he determined to avail himself of the opportunity to take a bit of Burgundy back to California.

"I picked up a bunch of canes that were lying all over the ground," Pisoni admitted to Garrett, "cut off the buds, wrapped 'em in wet gauze, stuck 'em down my pants and got on the plane."

Pisoni's claim to possessing the La Tâche clone in his vineyard has long been common knowledge within the California winegrowing community and to the vintners, such as Patz & Hall, who purchase his grapes. Donald Patz eagerly buys Pisoni's fruit for its inherent qualities, but is skeptical of the value of "suitcase clones" in general. "The problem I see with suitcase clones is that you really don't know what you have," he says. "In most Burgundy vineyards, especially older ones, there is a selection of clones planted. A handful of sticks from one site in Burgundy might yield one - probably more - actual genetic clones. Which ones are going to produce the better wines? Additionally, the blend of clones almost certainly will not be the same ratio in the California site as they were in the original Burgundian site."

Those who resorted to smuggling several years ago did so largely out of frustration with the quality of clonal material available in California at the time. Donald Patz suggests that there are two groups of suitcase smugglers: "People who brought in Dijon clone pinot noir vines that were, at the time, entirely unavailable and felt these were superior to any of the currently available California clone versions, and those who sought to get their hands on high-profile vineyard selections from Burgundy sites in order to achieve greater distinction for their California vineyard."

Particularly with Pinot Noir, it seems, perception is almost as important as reality.

What if a Pinot Noir specialist could claim to have replicated the source of La Tâche, say, or Romanée-Conti or Les Musigny in a California vineyard? Now there's something that would attract any Pinot lover. Like iron filings to a magnet.

To some extent, similar claims - touting the possession of Dijon clones or Pommard clones, or both - are being made by dozens of Pinot Noir producers, not only in California, but also in Oregon. While it's not a vineyard-specific claim, there's at least an implication of "Burgundian superiority" that arises from the association with the Côte d'Or city of Dijon (the variously numbered "Dijon" clones were developed at that city's university) or the famous appellation of Pommard.

In contrast, the French don't remotely exhibit the same level of interest in clones as do Americans. To the Burgundian grower, terroir is the mantra.

And that poses the ultimate question: If a winegrower has vines unquestionably cloned from vines at La Tâche, for example, and not affected by any treatment that might alter their genetic capabilities, will wine made from the fruit of those vines grown in California mimic or even remotely resemble La Tâche Pinot Noir?

Calera's Jensen is dubious. "So many people believe clones are the magic bullet. I don't believe that," he asserts.

Jensen established his vineyards in the mid-1970s on land laced with lots of limestone in the hopes of replicating to some extent the terroir he was convinced accounted for the great Pinot Noirs of the Côte d'Or (see "Calera - Mining Pinot Noir on a Limestone Mountain," October/November 1999). His use of plant material from the "mother block," which

had been propagated from the cuttings he had surreptitiously brought back from Burgundy, was motivated more by a desire to plant the best vines then available - "the real McCoy," as he puts it - rather than to duplicate flavors.

"Two-thirds of the Jensen Vineyard was planted with California nursery grafts," he explains, "but all of Reed, Selleck and one-third of Jensen were planted with wood from the 'mother block' because much of the pinot noir planted in California at that time was of uncertain pedigree, and I felt more secure going with true Burgundian cuttings."

California, not Burgundy

Pinot specialist Tony Soter, proprietor of Etude Wines in Napa Valley and one of California's most talented winemakers, emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the difference in climate between Burgundy and California.

Echoing Jensen, Soter insists that "clones are not the silver bullets for great Pinot Noir. A plant growing in Burgundy, with its colder climate, is going to produce different fruit than a clone of that plant growing in California, where it's warm enough so that we don't have to worry about grapes ripening every vintage," he explains. "The potential fruitfulness of a Burgundian clone is significantly affected by the temperature of its environment" he continues. "There's also the factor of yield to consider. What may be a naturally low-yielding vine in Burgundy will be more fruitful in California because of the warmer climate - we have to struggle year after year to restrict the tonnage in our vineyards."

Nevertheless, Soter is intrigued by these smuggled clones sufficiently to use fruit from them, as well as other unusual or distinctive clones, to produce tiny quantities - less than 500 cases - of Pinot Noir each year for his winery's "Heirloom" program. (Soter considers these clones to be horticultural treasures, much like clones of other plants, such as heirloom tomatoes, that have been handed down from generation to generation and fly in the face of commercial demands for uniformity in color, shape and generous yield.) The first such bottling to be released came from the 1996 vintage.

"There's a rich heritage of plant selection in California, particularly pinot noir," Soter explains. "Some of the most interesting selections, however, are on the brink of oblivion because it's often uneconomical to farm them. They often harbor grapevine viruses and are chronically shy-bearing with a marked tendency to produce small, irregularly shaped bunches and very small berries - an indication of concentrated flavor potential."

In the course of sourcing grapes from several vineyards for his winery, Soter came across a number of these heirloom clones, usually planted in small test plots that are often ignored or forgotten by growers because of their inability to consistently produce large crops. "These vines have a story behind them," he notes. "They aren't just UC-Davis number such and such. Growers know where they got the wood, for the most part, although in some cases it's a matter of anecdotal lineage." Soter notes that among these people, it's understood that smuggling is part of the tradition. "Because disease-free, high-yielding vines are the basic tenets of academic and commercial plant selection, as opposed to wine quality," he explains, "it's easy to imagine how the Pinot Noir 'Grail Seekers' have had to develop their own underground channels for plant propagation."

Among the clones he works with for his Heirloom program are those designated Calera (a suitcase import with long California residency), Swan and Hanzell. Additionally, although he clearly doesn't want to exploit the sources for commercial purposes, he has access to clones derived from Le Musigny and Clos de la Roche. He's nicknamed the sources collectively as "Clos la Baggage."

"I think it's cheap and exploitative to trade on the Burgundian vineyard name, he asserts. "It's not unlike copyright infringement, because you're not producing the same wine as that yielded from a famous vineyard simply because you have a clone from that vineyard."

There are too few of these vines to make commercial quantities of clone-specific wines; all of Etude's Heirloom Pinots, for instance, are blends from separately vinified clone selections. Having tasted all of the Heirloom bottlings through the 1998 vintage, it's my impression that they are unusually expressive, concentrated and pure expressions of pinot fruit.

Heirloom bottlings are made using the most traditional methods, which exclude pumping, fining or filtration. New, high-toast French barrels are employed for aging each lot. "Those lots that aren't overwhelmed by the oak are candidates for Heirloom," Soter confides.

Barrel samples from vintage 2000 illustrate the range of flavors and textures available to Soter, such as the dense, plush, black-fruit Pinot with Rhône-like, roasted meat qualities derived from the Clos de la Roche clone, to the violet-tinged, more delicate, sweet strawberry Pinot produced from a mystery clone - probably smuggled in.

Making wine from heirloom clones - and paying the grower what it takes to turn these vines into a profitable crop - is one way to preserve them. Another is to propagate them beyond their current home. "We're always just one step ahead of the tractor," Soter says. "Once, we returned to a vineyard to do some management work only to find that the grower had pulled out the test block and replanted it with chardonnay."

To avoid this calamity in the future, Soter has arranged with two growers to farm several "refuge" acres of heirloom clones propagated from existing material - 7 acres near Sebastapol and 4.5 acres in Carneros.

And thus the legacy of suitcase importation continues to populate California's vineyards. The lure of distinctive Pinot Noir is a powerful driving force. "There's lots of good, commercial plant material available to growers here, so smuggling isn't necessary today," Soter observes. "That doesn't mean it will stop, though."


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.

Risky Business:

The romantic practice of smuggling suitcase clones may well have seen its day. Tougher laws are now on the books and the real threat of contaminating American crops looms large. Agents for the U.S. Department of Agriculture are in place at every port of entry, scrutinizing declarations passengers fill out concerning whether they are carrying in any agricultural items obtained abroad. "If it's a negative declaration and the passenger is found to possess plant material, the contraband is confiscated and the passenger is in hot water," warns Larry Hawkins, a spokesman for the USDA.

A smuggler who evades detection at a port of entry is still not out of the woods. Kathleen Harvey, program supervisor for nursery, seed and cotton in the California Department of Food and Agriculture, warns that state law gives the department authority to order uprooting and eradication of vineyard plantings derived from smuggled plant material deemed to be dangerous. "It's not likely the department would invoke this authority for a vineyard planted many years ago," she admits, "but we would seek a court order for a recent instance of a breach in the quarantine. The risk to the state's vineyards is just too great to ignore."

Deborah Golino, the director of the Foundation Plant Material Service at UC-Davis, details the risks in no uncertain terms: "Direct importation of nursery stock is prohibited for two primary reasons: First, these crops, such as grapes, cherries and strawberries, are extremely economically important. Second, they are vegetatively propagated by cuttings, buds or runners, so that nursery stocks of these crops can easily be the source of virus diseases." She stresses "there is no cure or therapy for these diseases once they're established in the stock," and believes "a grower who plants contaminated stock will be disadvantaged throughout the life of the planting."

Disadvantaged, that is, unless the grower's suitcase clone vines have the parent plant's viruses that make for distinctive, superb Pinot Noir.

- Steve Pitcher