Duncan Peak Vineyards: Historic ranch reflected in handcrafted wine
"Our mission is to make excellent wines for people to enjoy, and to preserve this property exactly the way I found it," says Hubert Lenczowski, co-proprietor of Duncan Peak Vineyards, on Mountain House Road just west of Hopland. "The only thing we've changed is that there are grapevines."
On a sunny afternoon two weeks ago those vines had been harvested. Bins of fat black petite sirah grapes and the tiny ruby cabernet grapes were beginning fermentation next to the iconic barn on Lenczowski's 110-acre ranch at the base of Duncan Peak. We step back to admire the barn, built in 1860. The peak of the barn reproduces the Coastal Range's Duncan Peak, which rises in symmetry as a backdrop for the namesake vineyard and winery.
This property was part of the 15,000-acre Rancho Sanel Mexican Land Grant awarded to Fernando Feliz in the early 1800s. In 1858, Elijah Duncan purchased this property and other acreage from the Rancho. The barn, built of virgin redwood planks and timbers, has been carefully restored by Lenczowski, who points to some of the original square nails used to build the barn. Inside, winery equipment replaces the cow stalls. The hipped shed, which was once for sheep and chickens, is now a temperature controlled cellar for barrel aging.
Lenczowski's parents bought the ranch in 1962 and he's been coming here since he was 6 years old. He lived in Berkeley where his father was a professor in international relations, but he feels like he grew up on these rolling hills next to Feliz Creek under the shadow of Duncan Peak. After he and Resa, his wife and partner in the winery, married, he leased the ranch from his family in 1982 and planted an acre of cabernet sauvignon.
"I had a dream of doing something agricultural on the property," says Lenczowski, who is an attorney in the East Bay, where he specializes in business law. "Some of our neighbors were growing grapes and making great wine so it made sense to plant a vineyard." People like the Fetzers, Jim Milone and Bill Crawford were making wonderful wine. Resa and Hubert have two children, who are now 17 and 18. Like dad, they spent their weekends and summers in Hopland ,where they have worked the ranch and helped with winemaking chores.
Since the early 1980s, the Lenczowskis have added 10 acres of cabernet sauvignon and one acre of petite sirah. Their first vintage of cabernet was pressed in 1986 and released in 1989. While not paper certified, everything at Duncan Peak is organic. The vines are fertilized with the grape and other compost.
This year the harvest was on Oct. 15, which Lenczowski considers late for Duncan Peak. The devastating spring frost knocked off about half of the fruit, which most people might consider terrible news. Lenczowski, tanned and lean, his dark hair thinning and his chiseled face effecting a calm impression of intelligence, wit, and competence, is delighted. "It's good news. It's going to be great wine," he says in his understated way. He explains that there is an inverse relationship between quality and quantity. "The less you have the better." That's because the vigor from the vines goes into the smaller crop of grape clusters, like the "Grand Crus of Bordeaux in France," he tells me.
The scale of the vineyard and the winery means Lenczowski can do everything by hand. In normal years when the grape crop is more prolific, he cuts clusters of berries off the vines around verasion, which is when they are just starting to turn from green to purple. "We leave one or two bunches per cane." This year's harvest produced only one ton per acre. "That's great news for a winemaker," he says. The trick. he says. is to pick the grapes ripe but not overly ripe. He knows every bunch that goes into the wine.
"Our wines are drinkable as soon as they are bottled," Lenczowski says matter-of-factly. He describes his cabernet and petite sirah as not super high alcohol and tannic. "I've tried fancy cult wines that at 10 years old are not ready to drink and the fruit is already dead," he explains. "Ours at 10 and 15 years are still vibrant and fruit rich. You don't need to have a lot of tannins and alcohol to have a lovely wine."
"People who normally get a headache from drinking red wine have told me that my wines don't have that effect," he says. He quickly admits that he's not a scientist and doesn't even try to add different things, but there's something to be said for the lower tannins and alcohol.
He tastes regularly from the 30 barrels the wines age in for a couple of years. He picks two to four of the best tasting barrels each year to bottle as the best of the best. The 50 to 100 cases of the reserve wine are only sold on the website and through his mailing list. His wife Resa does marketing and sales for the 1,000 cases they make of Duncan Peak wines. The wine is totally estate grown and produced. "Our story is of authenticity wine made on this property is a reflection of what these soils and this place can produce," says Lenczowski. Tours can be made by appointment on the weekends.
"All the buildings on the ranch have historic connections with the property and the story of the winery," says Lenczowski. One of the old buildings was an old "milk barn." Cows were milked in the big barn below and milk brought up to the milk barn to stay cool until a truck came and took it to the city. This was before refrigeration. The building had no windows and was charcoal insulated. It stays cool and was the original winery until the mid-1990s. The home is a bungalow built by Bessie Duncan in 1945. It perches on a knoll shaded by trees and with just enough room on the small plateau for a lawn and a porch from which to sip some cabernet and watch the sun set over Duncan Peak.
Lenczowski's goal is to preserve the integrity of the property and make it a living museum of local history. Simultaneously he wants to make excellent wine to help put Mendocino County on the map as a great winemaking region.
"I try to be an ambassador for Mendocino County around California,, the nation and internationally when we market our wines in those places," he says. "I proudly put Mendocino County on my label because I want to let people know this is where the great things our soils produce come from."
TASTING NOTES: Duncan Peak's Mendocino County 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon is one of those easy drinking wines with a light plum aroma and symmetry that could go with many foods. It was especially lovely with herb crusted pan-fried pork chops and first of the season chanterelle mushrooms in a deglazed wine sauce.