Enobytes Wine Blog

Ancient Peaks Winery is riding high. Not only does it sit a bit higher in elevation, but the recent certification of its Margarita vineyard as Sustainable in Practice, or SIP, is another feather in an already festooned cap.

This is a storied vineyard in a storied place. Franciscan missionaries founded rancho Santa Margaraita, at the foot of the Santa Lucia Mountains and the top of the Cuesta Grade between San Luis Obispo and Atascadero, CA in 1774. The vineyard itself was planted by Tim Mondavi in the 1990’s and was purchased by Doug Filipponi and his partner Karl Wittstrom in 2005.

“It’s a mystical place,” said Filipponi of the Margarita vineyard. “The ancient peaks themselves are volcanic on one side, granite on the other and the run off is what built this place.”

Margarita vineyard spans 996 acres and spending time out among the vines can very easily mean being out for the whole day and then some. “I have a license plate frame on my truck that says, ‘my office,’” said Filipponi. “You can cover 40 miles if you do it right.”

Still, even in traveling the vineyard, Filipponi, Wittstrom and winemaker Mike Sinor have been consistently pairing down, looking for ways to do less with more and allow the vineyard to speak for itself. “It’s important to us to leave the ranch better than we found it,” he said.

SIP is a program certified by the Central Coast Vineyard Team. “There’s a lot more to it than meets the eye,” said Filipponi. “It’s not just about using less fertilizer and pesticides.”

Indeed, the sustainability certification is a big undertaking and its component parts are many. The Central Coast Vineyard Team has been working for some 16 years with farmers from Monterey County down to Santa Barbara County to help them create a more sustainable future. For more information about the process, see this link.

“It’s a pretty extensive set of certifications,” Filipponi said. “If you’re low on any one of them, you don’t get certified.”

While it is true that Ancient Peaks avoids synthetic pesticides and herbicides where possible, their commitment to sustainability goes much further. Wildlife corridors dot the vineyard allowing deer, amphibians and even the occasional black bear coming down from the Santa Lucia’s to continue natural migration patterns. Wittstrom tells the story of driving through the vineyard at night and the headlights coming around a bend to find a bear feeding on the ripening fruit.

“We put in bat boxes, too because their whole diet is insects,” said Filipponi. Ancient Peaks, in fact, hosts 34 bat boxes, 471 bluebird boxes, 29 owl boxes and 13 predatory bird perches. “We also water very little now and our frost protection uses one-third of the water we used to use,” said Filipponi. “There’s not a lot of waste.” Wetlands offsets exceed normal recommendations and centuries old oak trees have been left in tact and not disturbed. “We’re actually a certified haven for the red-legged frog as well,” said Filipponi.

The unique calcareous soils provide ideal growing conditions for Ancient Peaks’ wines. The taste profiles are deep and rich, full of minerals and with a depth in the finish that is round and smooth, never flat. Walking the vineyards here, one can actually see fossilized oyster shells and the loam is, in most cases, a light cream color just beneath the surface.

Spraying citrus oils to suppress mold and using a modified tractor that both sweeps and mows as well as prunes allowing fewer passes through the vineyard, Filipponi’s farming techniques continue to evolve into a pattern of “less is more” and allow him to keep to the promise he and Wittstrom made to leave the vineyard better than they found it.

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by Mark Storer