Grape Escape: The Future Looks Rosy at Sante Arcangeli’s Chrysanthemum Shed

It’s been a rough few years for winemaker John Benedetti, but his smile radiates with confidence and optimism. 

“I lost Melanie right before harvest of 2019,” Benedetti says. “It was a rough time and then the pandemic, then the fires, and this year, the floods! Plus being a single Dad, too.” 

Epic challenges, for sure. Losing his beloved wife and soulmate was a shock, and he quickly learned how complicated life would become when managing a growing load of custom crush clients, as well as his own Sante Arcangeli brand. 

Helping his son Lucca navigate the loss of his mother and deal with the normal everyday trauma of grade school, which were compounded by the challenges of learning during the pandemic, was a lot to manage. 

“I decided to simplify things on the wine side,” Benedetti explains. “I’m mostly concentrating on my own brand now and a few small projects, letting other stuff go. I have a very small wholesale presence now, a couple of accounts in Vegas, plus local places, like Cantine, Deer Park, Lillian’s and Alderwood.”

Being the winemaker of record for Lester Family, though, is pretty much his dream job. “I love making wine from that property and working with the family, and with Prudy [Foxx]! They give me so much freedom in terms of winemaking.” 

Some things are running really well, including the Aptos tasting room, which opened during Melanie’s illness. “The staff there is so great!” says Benedetti. “It pretty much just runs without me.” 

On the other hand, the Pescadero tasting room at Harley Farms, has really been impacted by the brutal winter of 22/23.  Like many towns formed around riverbanks in the region, flooding has been devastating beginning with the first big atmospheric river to strike at the end of December. 

“Pescadero has been pretty much shut down since the beginning of the year,” Benedetti tells us. “My family’s market (Arcangeli Grocery) has been seriously impacted. I’ve never eaten so much wagyu in my life, but my brother wanted to keep his account current with his supplier, so I filled my freezer.”  If you follow him on FB, you’ve seen all the photos of amazing meals made with wagyu. I suggested he do a cookbook. 

Getting people into the Pescadero tasting room will be rewarding to all parties, as it’s absolutely glorious there now, with the green hills and all the wildflowers. But flooding and standing water have been a problem not just for visitation but for the baby goats that are born in the early spring. He says that many of the babies did not fare well, another casualty of this year’s winter that never ends. Check the website for the current status of the Pescadero tasting room.

What keeps that spark in his eyes burning bright through all this? His treasured vineyard sources and the fruit of the vines that is resting in barrels right now. Plus he’s completely organized in the cellar now, with bar codes on each barrel that allow him to keep track of what has happened with each one. “I can track when I top off, sulphur, etc. And it keeps me honest on the cost of goods: turned out I was $3 per bottle too low on the rosé!” 

We tasted through some of the 2022s, which are showing incredible promise. 

First up a 2022 Split Rail Chardonnay from a twice-used Damy barrel, which was tank fermented before it went to rest in wood. This is lively and inspiring stuff, with fresh pineapple, lemon cream and chamomile. For such a high acid wine, it is nicely tamed in the mouth, thanks to ML. He used three different yeasts in fermenting the Spilt Rail in 2022, to provide complexity.

He’s been making Split Rail for 12 years now. “It took me a while to wrap my head around this vineyard. The Chardonnay needs to be coddled.  You have to be careful when fermenting, otherwise it will stick. I try to keep the RS less than .5gms/liter: Rombauer has 6!” says Benedetti.

He did battonage until the end of January, and because it’s been so cold, it took forever for ML to finish. 

In contrast, we then tried a barrel-fermented lot from 2022. Done in a 2021 Damy barrel, it oozed orchard fruit, namely apples with ginger, cinnamon and brown sugar and a squeeze of lemon, like the very best apple pie with a bit of quince and the oerfect pastry. This had great verve and length. “We have to remember we are not in Chablis,” Benedetti observed. “I’ve really been getting into the Meursault realm, and I think this wine is reminiscent.” Some of the Chardonnay is resting in Montgillard barrels, which are coopered in Meursault. 

He ends up using about 15% new oak for his Chardonnay, noting that his mentor, James MacPhail, has settled at around 20%, and much of his fruit is from the cold Sonoma coast. 

We tried a 2021 Damy barrel with Robert Young clone Chardonnay from Lester, which he says comes in really late, in November, just like the Lester Syrah. It was a fair bit reductive. “Needs topping!” he commented. 

One of the reasons to barrel taste is to keep up with which barrels need attention. Every single one is it’s own ecosystem in which any component could get out of balance if not carefully monitored. The next Lester barrel sample, from a neutral Montgillard, opened with a touch of matchstick, indicating a bit of reductiveness, but the wine demonstrated ripping acid with guava and a touch of sweetness on the edge along with a grippy mouthfeel. “You have to know when to jump on the reductive train,” he remarked.

As we walked through the former chrysanthemum shed to where the Pinot Noir barrels were stored, I wondered what the final Chardonnay blends of both Lester and Split Rail will present for 2022. We’ll just have to be patient,

The Hand in Hand Vineyard in Pleasant Valley is planted to Calera and Martini clones of Pinot Noir. The previous owners lost the vineyard, which was Chardonnay, in the crash of 2008. Benedetti snapped it up and grafted it to Pinot Noir in 2014, using the original rootstock. This wine is aromatic beauty, with cranberry, pomegranate, earth and incense, yielding blueberry, fir and porcini on the palate.

“It had better be good,” says Benedetti. “Ken Swegles is managing the vineyard now. It’s only one acre and I get about one ton. It’s totally intense and wonderful, but I suck at making money in this business. I must not be doing it right!”

This barrel of Hand in Hand will likely be combined with two barrels of Split Rail Pinot and one from Coast Grade to make the 2022 Ananda, the wine with the spectacular butterfly on the label, made and named in Melanie’s honor. 

We tried a barrel sample of Split Rail from a 2021 barrel that had seen a bit of stem inclusion. The color was deep pink rose blossom in color with a fantastic perfume of red grapefruit and peonies, along with raspberries and tarragon. With its riot of red raspberry candy fruit and vivid red grapefruit juice, this is a party in the mouth. In the mid-palate, though, the structure reveals itself. “I tend not to use too many stems.” Certainly the stems are not overtly noticeable in this one, as it serves up pleasing flavors of sarsaparilla and birch beer.

“I get gob-smacked by the fruit in Pinot Noir!” Benedetti admits. “But you forget about the earthy component to it.  At one point, I was drinking some really slutty, hot Cab Franc from Napa with a friend, and I decided to open a Saveria Pinot Noir. The dude puts his nose in the glass and says, ‘What’s with the baby diaper?!’ And I realized that after drinking something really ripe and fruity, the first thing you smell in Pinot is the earthiness. It all comes at you.” 

Of all the wines that Benedetti makes, the Clone 32 Pinot Noir from Split Rail is the most delicate color and the most transparent. It literally shines in the glass like a magenta bulb on a Christmas tree. 

“You can’t make it dark!” Benedetti admitted. “I tried to do that in 2010, and it just doesn’t want to be anything other than what it is.” It’s a poster child of self-expression, surprisingly non-fruit driven with aromas of forest floor and a fine equestrian tack room filled with polished leather. One sip and the cherry lemonade flavors, laced with fern and tarragon, smack you upside the head with huge mouthwatering acid. I love this stuff, but Benedetti, noting that it is at 3.5pH, will leave some of it in barrel for a bit longer before racking, to tame it some. “I am happy that the David Bruce and Pommard blend has less acid!” It gives him room to maneuver.

Next up we tried a sample of the David Bruce clone from a 2019 Fontainbleu barrel which Benedetti had made for him by a Chilean cooper using French wood. “I just can’t say ‘no’ to complexity,” Benedetti admitted. “I am always trying new coopers and forests.”  This glowed purple magenta and smelled of candied apples and pine resin, and yet in the mouth, proved distinctively fruity, with plentiful acid wrapped around a core of fantastic completeness. It felt very close to being ready to drink, with perhaps just a hint of green that might benefit from some time to mellow out. “I have to resist the urge to bottle things too early!!” 

Next up was a 2022 Saveria Vineyard Pinot Noir from a 2018 Montgillard barrel which wowed us with its gorgeous deep color: it has an electric purple edge. He uses a bit of grape skin powder to avoid the use of SO2 in his wines. As always the signature aromas of strawberry rhubarb dominate here, along with a whiff of lilacs and roses. The flavors are pure and satisfying, and the acid slightly lower than Hand in Hand and Split Rail. He calls Saveria, “the Goldilocks Pinot Noir.” He initially got fruit from Saveria to put into his Integrato program, but now bottles it as a vineyard designate. 

With such great vineyard sources and such careful matching of fruit to barrel, the 2022 vintage of Sante Arcangeli wines is definitely looking like another in a string of home runs for Benedetti. Every harvest has been a nervous at bat, though, with Mother Nature a pitcher who could care less about pitch clocks or other rules. 

“I used to think when I started that there were a bunch of people that just wanted me to fail,” he says. “At the same time, I worried that I would let people down: that the wines wouldn’t be good enough. That I wouldn’t do the vineyards justice. I’m not so worried about that anymore.” 

With every Pinot Noir he’s ever made having scored 90 points or better, and some in the 95 realm, he’s got nothing left to prove and plenty to celebrate. Plus, we got rain this year and those dry farmed vineyards finally have something to drink.  

No wonder he’s smiling.