The best local wine you never heard of

You’ve got your Dutton-Goldfield, your Gary Farrell, your Papapietro-Perry. Then there’s your K-J and Clos du Bois, Rodney Strong and Francis Ford Coppola. But who in this self-appointed Wine Country has ever heard of River Road Vineyards?

Last weekend my daughter Nicole handed me a bottle of wine, left over from a catering job. Not only was it from an unfamiliar winery – River Road Vineyards & Winery – but the varietal was Pinot Meunier. This close cousin of Pinot Noir is a frequent contributor to sparkling wines, especially sparkling rosés, but rarely bottled on its own. So I was skeptical, but as we’ve all learned, never look a gift bottle in the neck.

I tried it, paused, tried it again. I passed it around for second opinions. I had some more, and with each taste it got better – black cherry, cola, a round mouthfeel, lingering but not overdrawn finish with a hint of white pepper. It’s the kind pinot I always hope to find in a pinot noir, but rarely do: a satisfyingly extracted and flavorful wine that stands alone – and without that barnyard thing going on.

At Bottle Barn the buyer had never heard of it, thought it was somebody’s second label, and scoffed at the idea of bottling Meunier. (The name, by the way, is not pronounced “manure,” nor should it be.) But a quick web search showed the winery was just outside of Forestville, on Ross Road, smack in the heart of the Green Valley of the Russian River appellation – less than a mile from the much better known Iron Horse, and about as close to Dutton Estate.

“We’ve been here for about 30 years,” said owner Gary Mills when I met him at the winery. “We probably bottle more Pinot Noir and Chardonnay than just about anybody else in the Russian River.” Then why have I never heard of River Road Vineyards? “We keep a low profile. We hate publicity,” he deadpanned.

The real reason you’ve never heard of River Road is a little more complicated than just a curmudgeonly distrust of publicity. “We sell most of it back east, through a big house called Total Wine and More,” Mills told me. “So I really don’t have to go out pitching the wine or making a show.” For now, Total doesn’t have a Bay Area presence – the closest outlet is in Roseland, the suburb of Sacramento – making River Road wines hard to come by locally.

Lanky and informal, dressed in jeans and open shirt, Gary Mills is one of two brothers who started the winery 28 years ago, naming it because their first two vineyards were on two different River Roads – one in Forestville, one in Asti. Now they’re down to the 12 acres they own on Ross Road, in a production facility “that’s more a barn than anything else.”

Out back, a forklift shifted casks around in the warehouse, making room for the impending harvest. Inside, lab equipment for measuring sugars and alcohol cluttered up the office, where a woman did double-duty on the computer and phones.

Brother Steve moved to Montana a few years ago, leaving Gary and winemaker Joe Freeman to do the bulk of the work. And father Wallace, who “still does the books,” Gary told me. This is a family business, started because they just had to get out of L.A., built up on sweat equity and year after year of vineyard management.

“I’m a farmer, not a winemaker,” he told me modestly, but like any good farmer he knows what’s growing well and how to spot a good harvest. “The first priority in sourcing good grapes is where's growing, and the second is how they farm. You can tell if they know how to get a good crop – it’s well-tended, clean, orderly.” Outside the window, the rows of pinot and syrah were tidy, regular, almost regimental. And just about ripe.

To some extent, Mills’ low profile is self-imposed, but it’s not entirely embraced. “They just had a big tasting not half a mile from here,” he said. “I couldn’t even find out how to get invited, and I know we make a lot more wine than most of the people there.”

Indeed. He estimates they produce 8,000 cases of pinot, as well as about 23,000 cases of chardonnay, plus a couple thousand more case of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, syrah and zinfandel, placing their total production close to 35,000 cases. This is far more wine than such celebrity Russian River producers as Rochioli (10,000 cases), Joseph Swan (5,000 cases) or Papapietro-Perry (6,000 cases).

A case could be made, certainly, that a bottle of Papapietro-Perry pinot is better than one from River Road. But consider the price differential: River Road’s Hopkins Ranch pinot noir is $26; PP’s Elsbree Vineyards is $49. Better, maybe; but twice as good? Or three times better than that 2007 Pinot Meuniere? You can pick that up for $12 - in Sacramento.

“It’s all about the value – price ratio,” Mills explained. “We keep that ratio down because there’s a lot of things we could do that we just don’t. We don’t have a $100,000 marketing plan. We don’t have shelf talkers, we don’t travel to sell the wine. It’s mainly word of mouth.”

There’s another thing, I notice, looking around at the narrow and cluttered entry hall. They don’t have a tasting room. “Which means we don’t have to staff it six or seven days a week,” he points out.

Though the entry hall is free of souvenirs, award ribbons and the other frou frou one comes to expect, it did have a long rough wooden table, with a small watermelon on it. Mills pushed it aside to open some wine -- both the ‘06 and ‘07 Pinot Meuniere, and a couple vineyard designate Pinot Noir, the Hopkins vineyard and the ‘06 Essence.

Of the two Pinot Meuniere, the ’07 was more extracted, darker in color, fuller on the palate. The Pinot Noir were both rich and flavorful, though my vote went to the Essence, enriched by a sort of free run process which Mills explained to me, in more detail than most farmers would know.

And if, upon reading this article, somebody should ring them up and ask for a tasting? “We don’t go out of our way but we try to accommodate people. For the next couple weeks we’ll be pretty tied up with crush, but if we’ve got time we’ll show you around and try a couple wines. Just give us a call first.”

That price-to-value argument was still on my mind. I asked again: isn’t there anywhere I can buy River Road wines?

Gary Mills thought a minute. “You can get our Chardonnay in Davis, at a market there called Nugget. It’s about $10 a bottle.”

Davis? Even with gas at $4/gallon, it might be worth the drive. Pick me up a couple bottles while you’re out there.