How This Acclaimed Sonoma Winery Created Outstanding Italian Vareitals

As people flocked to California during the Gold Rush, Italian immigrants were among the ones heading west. Not all of them were there for mining—some Italians looked to the land for different riches and became pioneers of Golden State winemaking. As an ode to these early vintners, the team behind Rhys Vineyards have created Centennial Mountain in Sonoma with the ambitious goal of making world class wines combining California terroir and Italian grapes. After working with agronomists in Italy for years to learn the secrets of unlocking Old World potential in New World soils, they’ve just released their first vintage made with varieties such as Nebbiolo, Carricante, and Nerello Mascalese. With a lineup of single varietals and blends, the project took more than a decade from inception to delivery, and it has been more than worth the wait.

Growing Italian varieties in California wine country is not a brand-new concept. Zinfandel, which is known in Italy as Primitivo, has been cultivated here for almost 200 years, and there have been plantings of Sangiovese throughout Napa and Sonoma since the late 19th century. Although it doesn’t stretch back nearly that far, the Centennial Mountain project has deep roots; owner Kevin Harvey tells Robb Report that the story began in 2005, when he and his team—who he describes as “Nebbiolo fanatics”—first planted the variety at his Horseshoe Estate Vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which turned out to be too cold for ripening. “We found the grapes did not even turn red by the end of season,” he says. Four years later he met Barolo viticulturist Gianpiero Romana, who provided weather station data that helped Harvey locate a better site for his project.

“This data showed clearly that one of the secrets of great Nebbiolo was finding a site that had a very small difference between day and night temperatures, Harvey says. “In other words, it has cool days and warm nights, which is essentially the opposite of California’s valleys.” Using the data, Harvey realized that a spot at 2,000 feet of elevation about 15 miles from the Pacific Ocean would be ideal. Pinpointing the spot on Centennial Mountain that is now Centennial Mountain Vineyard, Harvey and his team from Santa Cruz Mountains’ Rhys Vineyards, which includes vineyard manager Javier Tapia Meza, director of winemaking Jeff Brinkman, and winemaker Eric Prahl, began planting vines in 2013. To the west of both the Dry Creek Valley and Rockpile AVAs in the north of the Sonoma County AVA, Centennial Mountain’s proximity to the ocean and higher elevation make it cooler and more moderated than either of those AVAs.

In 2005 Harvey and his wife were traveling in Italy and drank a white wine from Mount Etna in Sicily that he says blew his mind. That bottle led him on a quest “to understand and pursue Carricante,” the grape it was made with, “as it clearly has enormous potential for truly great complex white wines that thrive in a warmer climate.” Working with Salvo Foti, a Sicilian winemaker who is known as an evangelist for the island’s native grapes, Harvey installed weather stations on the slopes of Mount Etna to better understand the climactic needs of both Carricante and indigenous red grape Nerello Mascalese.

The Centennial Mountain team partnered with Foti to plant a Carricante vineyard and revive a 100-year-old Nerello Mascalese vineyard in two distinct areas of the volcano’s slopes. Foti farmed the vineyards and made wine, and the American counterparts visited three or four times each year to understand the viticulture and winemaking and to make blends from what was produced. “We applied what we learned on Etna to Centennial Mountain, making small changes where necessary considering the site or winemaking logistics,” Brinkman says.  

While domestic sourcing was sufficient for cuttings of Nebbiolo, Barbera, Zinfandel, and Carignan (which here goes by its Sicilian name, Nerello Capuccio), Harvey and Brinkman are the first people to import Carricante and Nerello Mascalese vines into the United States. Although the climactic conditions were right, they were taking a gamble planting the Sicilian varieties in soils that are vastly different than volcanic slopes of Mount Etna. “What we did know is that the clay and schist soils of Centennial Mountain were capable of creating great complex wines, but honestly, we got lucky in just how well these grapes performed in this soil,” Harvey says. And although the soil match to Barolo is off, Harvey likens the blue metamorphic schist with a high mineral content to Piedmont DOCG Gattinara, which is known for its high quality but still under the radar Nebbiolo. The Sicilian varieties utilize the traditional Etna training method Albarello, Italian for “little tree,” in which the shoots are trained up and around the trunk, leaving the fruit completely exposed. “Both Carricante and Nerello demand constant sunlight and Nerello especially demands warmth,” Brinkman says. “It’s one reason we think they could be more well suited for California as temperatures continue to rise in some growing regions.”

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New to the market are 2021 single varietal bottlings of Nebbiolo, Carricante, and Nerello Mascalese plus Centennial Mountain Centennial Reserve, a blend of Nebbiolo, Nerello Mascalese, Barbera, Carignan, and Zinfandel. “We had a nearly perfect growing season that produced concentrated wines with great acidity,” Brinkman says. “There was the added element of vineyard maturation that really became apparent in 2021.” Taking inspiration from Rhys Vineyard’s sparkling wine program and its Perpetual Reserve multi-vintage bottling and using a name borrowed from Spain’s Sherry region, the team also released Solera I, a multi-vintage expression of the same varieties with base wine from several years back to 2017. Centennial Mountain 2021Centennial Reserve showcases the red fruit flavors of Nebbiolo backed by floral, spice, and Mediterranean herb notes, wrapped in layers of acidity and almost dusty minerality that linger into a vivid finish. A wine that would never be made in Italy, it shines a light on the possibility of its native varieties unfettered by Old World winemaking rules. Twenty years after the genesis of the project and more than 10 years since the first vines were planted, Centennial Mountain’s wines prove that the combination of research and gambling paid off.