LIVERMORE VALLEY

CONCANNON VINEYARD

Excerpt from Wine Country Table: With Recipes that Celebrate California’s Sustainable Harvest
By Janet Fletcher

We were always taught that it is an honor to have our wine on someone’s table,” says John Concannon, a fourth-generation vintner whose family has been supplying the tables of wine lovers for more than a century. John’s entrepreneurial great-grandfather, James Concannon, helped introduce wine grapes to California’s Livermore Valley in the 1880s, and his heirs have made wine there ever since. Even during Prohibition, Concannon Vineyard kept the harvests going, producing sacramental wine for the Catholic Church. The church figures in the birth of Concannon Vineyards as well. James, an Irish immigrant, initially landed in Boston knowing just enough English to understand the “Irish Need Not Apply” signs. In San Francisco’s heavily Irish Mission District, he found a more hospitable home and went to work as a traveling salesman, covering his western territory on horseback.

WINDSWEPT VALLEY: Joseph Alemany, the first archbishop of San Francisco, encouraged Concannon to buy land in Livermore Valley and produce wine for the rapidly expanding church. Geological maps indicated that the valley had an unusual east-west orientation, inviting cool breezes from the Pacific Ocean through what is now known as the Altamont Pass. Wine grapes would love that.

Today, more than four thousand wind turbines line the Altamont Pass, their arms slowly swirling like synchronized swimmers, converting that airflow into energy. And the archbishop’s instincts were right. The marine influence produces large diurnal swings, with the valley’s warm-to-hot days pushing the grapes to ripeness and its reliably chilly nights preserving acidity.

Just as important for wine quality, the estate’s soil is rocky and fast draining, so roots dive deep. Winemaker James Foster has seen vines with roots that extend 30 feet. Such vines are survivors, able to scavenge for water and nutrients in dry years.

Recognizing similarities between the soils in Livermore Valley and Bordeaux, James Concannon traveled to the famous French wine region to get cuttings of Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, and Semillon. Alas, phylloxera, a root-eating aphid, devastated his vineyard and many others in the 1880s, so Concannon returned to Bordeaux in 1893. The vintner could not have foreseen that the Cabernet Sauvignon cuttings he brought back from Château Margaux would have a lasting impact on the California wine industry.

By the mid-1960s, many North Coast vineyards were suffering from viruses, but Concannon’s vines appeared healthy. Researchers from UC Davis visited the property in 1965, selected the heartiest-looking Cabernet Sauvignon vine and took three cuttings from it. To make sure the cuttings were virus-free, they subjected each one to heat treatment but for different amounts of time.

After propagation, these virus-free vines were released in the early 1970s as Concannon Clones 7, 8, and 11. “Growers felt confident with these cuttings,” recalls John Concannon, and they planted them widely. Today, California has 90,000 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon and an estimated 80 percent is from Concannon clones. Warren Winiarski, who started Napa Valley’s Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, remembers Jim Concannon, John’s father, bringing him newspaper-wrapped cuttings of Concannon Clone 7. This prized clone became the foundation of the acclaimed Stag’s Leap Cask 23 Cabernet Sauvignon.

HONORING AN HISTORIC VINE: As Concannon plans for the future, with “green” investments like a sophisticated water-treatment plant that will enable process water reuse, the winery takes pains to preserve its illustrious past. Just steps from its historic tasting room is the half-acre Mother Vine Vineyard, home to the head-pruned vine that yielded those three now-famous clones. Concannon’s Mother Vine Cabernet Sauvignon comes from this pocket-size vineyard, each vine descended from that hardy parent.

Among the noteworthy old bottles on display at Concannon, their labels yellowed and their fill height reduced by time, is a 1961 Concannon Vineyard Petite Sirah. Jim Concannon, a pioneer like his grandfather, was the first to bottle this sturdy, inky variety on its own. “Petite Sirah was the secret backbone in a lot of red wine,” says John, “but my father knew it could stand alone.”

It’s not the easiest grape to vinify, but the winery’s devotion to it has helped raise Petite Sirah’s profile and build its fan base. Today, California counts more than 10,000 acres planted to this heritage grape.

“Historical preservation is a big theme around here,” says John. The company has placed 200 acres of estate vineyards in a conservation trust, and upon learning that a historic Victorian home nearby was about to be demolished, the winery bought it, moved it, restored it, and now uses it for special events. The past is a fitting preoccupation for a winery whose white wine was served to Franklin Roosevelt and whose many “firsts” include hiring America’s first professional female winemaker, Katherine Vajda, a former Hungarian ballerina with a chemistry background. With time, perhaps a fifth generation of Concannons will step up to lead this groundbreaking winery into the future.