On a recent Saturday afternoon, I was driving to a wine tasting at the River Run Winery south of Watsonville. I was reminded, as we passed through the strawberry fields, with amorphous whorls of low clouds and fog around Mt. Madonna, how, at least once a day, we Santa Cruzans must repeat the same boring mantra to one another. It has various forms, but usually goes something like this: “This sure is an incredible place to live,” and/or, “We sure are lucky to live here.”

It is true though. There is something very special about Santa Cruz County.

Part of it, for me, is the open-chained nature of the landscape, a compound of vague childhood images: The meadows of Bambi, the swept hilltops and trees of Wuthering Heights, the pastoral glades, and humpbacked hills that could be The Lake Country, the lochs of Scotland, or Appalachian valleys.

Surrounded by all this sits River Run Winery. It is the southernmost winery of the Santa Cruz Mountains Wine -growers appellation. It sits on a macadamized berm that is Rogge Lane, in Aromas, a berm that quickly gives way to the rich alluvial fan that escorts the curvaceous, tree-packed Pajaro River. Typical of the tolerant “banana belt” microclimate, a chimoyra tree grows in the front yard of the winery. In the backyard, various “tropical” plants thrive, including bunches of the seductive, serpentine, iridescent-yellow stovepipe plant. Honeysuckle climbs up telephone cables and small finches suspend themselves upside down.

The owner-winemaker of River Run Winery, who would only give his name as J.P., is a rustic, jovial type attired in an antique, wine-stained Hawaiian shirt, sweat-stained straw hat and jeans, requisite garb for the California agrarian winemaker. He hosted the wine tasting from behind a makeshift metal table on a deck in the rear of the winery. River Run Winery is not usually open to the public, but it was this day for the Santa Cruz Mountains Wines passport tasting, a venture not unlike the Open Studios weekends offered each year by local artists; but this was aimed at pulling samplers and buyers into the inner sanctums of the winemakers. If one is unsure of whether to buy or not, then hopefully the persona of the artist-winemaker will convince.

J.P. (who threatens to make a Chateau Poladsky with a Polish donjon on the label), does not grow his own grapes, but ferrets out the vineyards he thinks will most compliment his style of winemaking. His 1998 Zinfandel, unlike the unctuous Zins of old, is light on the tongue, but spicy and complex, and is made from grapes purchased from the much-coveted Dusi vineyard near Paso Robles. Grape growers like Dusi are overrun with offers to purchase their grapes. It took J.P. three years of lobbying to get a share of these legendary grapes. The fortunate winemakers who buy grapes of this quality are not always buyers who bid the highest dollars, but often those winemakers who the grower respects, and who he feels will do justice to his produce. If grape sales were based solely on bucks, the Kendall-Jacksons of this world would purchase all the best grapes in the state, leaving only raisins for the artisans such as J.P.

J.P. calls the 2000 Carignane Rose his “piéce de résistance.” This wine is not to be compared to the flood of “blush” wines, such as the dreaded white Zinfandel, which gushed across California in the 1980s and gave the lie to how a quality rosé wine should taste. A true rosé will have not only strong berry and other fruit flavors, but is complex and challenging, and does not encourage drinking on ice. J.P.’s Carignane Rosé is nubile yet intricate, light raspberry in hue, and is made from Carignane grapes grown in the Cienega Valley near Hog Happy Hollister, and is more in the Provence style. Only 90 cases were made, and the wine is a steal at $11 per bottle.

J.P. said that these grapes were quite commonly sold in bulk, out of the backs of trucks, next to vineyards and along roadsides between Hollister and Salinas in the ’30s and ’40s, and could be crushed and funneled into your own barrel or jug right on the spot.

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