The birth of world-class wines

One day in the late 1990s, when Santa Barbara County was evolving into the world-class wine region it is today, two longtime friends had lunch in Santa Maria.

The men had first met in 1976 as members of the Santa Maria Rotary, when one, grape grower Louie Lucas, presented a program on European wines to the club.

The other, then newly appointed Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Royce Lewellen, to this day remembers Lucas' presentation and his enthusiasm for grapes, as well as the science of growing them.

Lucas is a pioneering grower; his grandfather, mother and aunts all were grape growers, mostly of table grapes in California's Central Valley.

“Louie had been growing grapes all these years, while I was a judge and an attorney,” Lewellen said during a recent interview.

Lewellen said his first contact with the local wine industry came when he represented the Firestone family as it opened the county's first winery. He also collected wine.

“I had a lot of red Bordeauxs and a lot of cabernet sauvignons from Napa and Sonoma counties,” Lewellen said.

Over the years, Lucas and Lewellen and their respective families shared more than a few bottles of good wine, and, as the years passed, more of that good wine came from vineyards in Santa Barbara County.

Flash forward to that lunch date in Santa Maria in 1996. Lewellen had been formally retired from the bench since September 1990 but continued to work on various court assignments in San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria and Santa Barbara, he said.

Over a meal at Chef Rick's, Lucas made Lewellen an offer the former judge couldn't refuse, and “when lunch was over, I was half-owner of 88 acres in Los Alamos and 100 acres of the Goodchild Vineyard,” Lewellen recalled with a wide smile.

The rest, one could say, has been history, as Lucas & Lewellen Vineyards has grown into one of Santa Barbara County's top wineries, with more than 60 employees, two Solvang tasting rooms, more than 10 varietals of wine and multiple awards - both for its wines and the grapes it sells to other winemakers and wineries up and down California.

Some of those local wineries are McKeon-Phillips, Rusack, Sunstone, Rideau, Brophy Clarke, Dan Gehrs and Shoestring, Lucas said.

“We sell half the grapes we grow and keep the other half,” he said.

Sources of the grapes

Lucas & Lewellen wines come from three vineyards: Valley View in Solvang, Goodchild, near Sisquoc, and Los Alamos.

The latter, having since grown to about 300 acres of vines, is the owners' largest site; it is where they grow the Italian varietals that comprise Mandolina Wines, Lucas & Lewellen's second label. Mandolina has 12 varietals.

The former owner of the Los Alamos vineyard brought cuttings of high-end varietals from Italy and planted them there, along with various vegetables, Lewellen said.

He and Lucas, believing Italian varietals would eventually gain a strong foothold on the Central Coast, kept the Italian theme in the Los Alamos vineyard, and it's paid off.

Pinot grigio is one of the hottest wines on the market today, thanks to Italians having marketed it heavily, Lucas said, adding that another Mandolina white, malvasia bianca, is also very popular with consumers.

At a Lucas & Lewellen winemaker dinner in April, Lucas told participants the Mandolina line “gives people the Italian experience. The wines, particularly pinot grigio, are very food-friendly, and one can see that the Italian wines can be accepted into the mainstream.”

That evening, every course of the meal was paired with Mandolina wines.

Where it all starts

Having grown up with grapes, studied soils and plants across Europe and California and supervised vineyards for more than three decades, Lucas knows how winemaking starts in the vineyard.

During the course of one afternoon with Lucas, one can learn about many of the factors that make a vineyard grow award-winning grapes.

Lucas detailed how critical irrigation is for the warmer Central Coast vineyards; the day of the interview was during the season's first heat spell.

This year is an extremely dry year, and in order to keep the bloom uniform, irrigation will be a key element in the current crop, he said.

So will the vines' leaf and shoot removal, timed so that each plant on any row gets the same amount of sunshine at the same point on any given day.

“It's all about, in order, climate, soil and the care of the grapes,” Lucas explained.

Back in the 1960s, Lucas made a lot of bulk wine and “shipped it on to other winemakers. I wanted to encourage this area's growth.”

Some of those winemakers included ZD, a label that was one of the first helping to make a name for Santa Barbara County grapes, he said.

Another to use Lucas-grown grapes was Jed Steele, whom Lewellen called the first winemaker for Kendall Jackson. Steele was the first to use a vineyard-designated chardonnay, Lewellen explained, and those grapes came from Lucas & Lewellen's Goodchild vineyard.

In those early years, “we here in Santa Barbara County had to begin to prove ourselves by variety,” Lucas said. “The Santa Maria Valley, for example, became known for its chardonnay and, of course, its pinot noir.''

At that time, Santa Barbara County wasn't particularly known for cabernet sauvignon, Lucas noted; in general, it simply wasn't hot enough here for the grape to thrive.

But as the years passed, growers learned that if the Santa Maria Valley was indeed too cool for cabernet sauvignon, vineyards in warmer areas, namely Sisquoc, Westerly and Happy Canyon, were quite suitable.

At the time Lucas purchased the Valley View vineyard, part of it contained cabernet sauvignon. Rather than assuming it would fail, Lucas took a chance on the varietal.

The 1997 Lucas & Lewellen Valley View Cabernet Sauvigon was the partners' first release.

“That Valley View cabernet sauvignon turned out to be quite good!” Lewellen said, noting the wine still drinks well 10 years later.

Another early release was the 1999 Lucas & Lewellen Dolcetto from Los Alamos and a chardonnay from the Goodchild vineyard, Lewellen noted.

In those first years, Lewellen recalled, when the price and demand for grapes wildly fluctuated from year to year, “we had to be prepared to make our own wine if we couldn't continue to sell all of our grapes.”

Finding a home

Early on, Lucas & Lewellen made its wine at facilities owned by Arthur Earl, Bridlewood and Rusack. But eventually, the need for more space and the partners' desire for more control over the final product necessitated more expansive quarters, Lewellen explained.

“In 2001 and 2002, we were making our wine at Arthur Earl's facilities, and we overwhelmed them with our crop,” he said.

It was time to relocate.

In 2002, the same year Lucas & Lewellen opened its tasting room and offices on Copenhagen Drive in Solvang, the company relocated production to a 20,000-square-foot site in Buellton, and 2003 was the first vintage produced at the new facility.

“We wanted to consolidate, and the stainless steel tanks and (access to) barrels for topping off make the necessary constant monitoring” of the fermenting and aging wines much easier, Lucas said.

In 1999, Daniel Gehrs joined Lucas & Lewellen as winemaker and remains onboard today as a consultant, Lewellen said.

In 2006, Lucas & Lewellen hired Megan McGrath as assistant winemaker. McGrath, a graduate of Midland School, Cal Poly and the University of California, Davis, has returned to her roots.

Reflecting on his current role at the company, Lewellen, a resident of Santa Ynez with his wife, Ann Foxworthy, former president of Allan Hancock College, grinned.

“The most fun for me is driving around in the vineyards with Louie and sitting down with Dan, Megan and Louie to taste the wines,” he said.

Ten years after they started, the goal of Lucas & Lewellen's proprietors remains the same.

“Making small lots of wine is our goal, still. That involves lots of tasting, sampling and comparison of a lot of wines,'' Lewellen noted.

Both men emphasize how far Santa Barbara County wines have come in the decade they've been vintners.

“All around us, there's a lot of good wine. And Santa Barbara County is right up there,'' Lewellen said.

Lucas, who by his own admission spends many hours in the vineyards studying the vines and the soils in which they grow, said the result of all that hands-on work “is nice and affordable wines. Our goal is to make wines that people enjoy.”

July 8, 2007