Before Napa, There Was Gold Country

Sep 10

4 min read

California's first wine region isn't the one you're thinking of. On Thursday, September 24, we're pouring six wines from it.

Ask most people where California wine comes from and they'll say Napa. Fair enough — Napa earned it. But Napa wasn't first, and it wasn't close.

In 1849, tens of thousands of people poured into the western slope of the Sierra Nevada looking for gold. What they found, mostly, was hard work and thirst. Within a few years, enterprising settlers in Amador and El Dorado counties had worked out that selling wine to miners was a steadier living than panning for gold, and they started planting vines on the rocky hillsides above the diggings. By the 1860s and '70s, the Sierra Foothills were producing wine commercially — decades before Napa became Napa.

Then came phylloxera, then Prohibition, and the region very nearly disappeared. Acreage collapsed. Wineries shuttered. What saved a handful of those old vineyards was, ironically, how remote and unglamorous they were — nobody bothered to tear them out and plant something else. A few blocks of gnarled, dry-farmed Zinfandel simply kept going, largely unbothered, for a hundred years and more.

The region started coming back in the late 1960s, when winemakers from the valley began seeking out Amador County fruit and discovered what those old vines could do. It's been quietly building ever since.

What altitude does to a grape

Here's the part that matters in the glass.

The Sierra Foothills sit high — the vineyards behind the wines we're pouring range from about 1,400 feet up past 3,000. Days are hot and bright, which ripens fruit fully. But at that elevation the temperature drops hard after sundown, and cold nights let a grape hang onto its natural acidity while the sugars build.

That's the whole trick. It's why these wines can be dark, generous and full of fruit without turning into the flabby, overripe monsters that Zinfandel gets unfairly typecast as. There's a spine underneath.

The soils do their part too: decomposed granite, sandy loam, red rocky ground, some volcanic. All of it lean, well-draining, and stingy — which stresses the vines, keeps yields low, and concentrates what little fruit each plant produces.

Who Andis are

Andis Wines is a modern operation in an old place. Founded in 2010 on Shenandoah Road in Plymouth, California, in the heart of the Sierra Foothills AVA, they farm with deliberate restraint — low yields, organic inputs, cover crops between the rows, minimal intervention once the fruit is in.

Their estate winemaker is Mark Fowler, working with a consulting team led by Philippe Melka and Maayan Koschitzky. Melka's name carries real weight in California; he has spent a career making some of Napa's most sought-after wines. That kind of talent pointed at old Foothills vineyards is exactly why this region is worth paying attention to right now.

Their Painted Fields label is a tribute to the growers who held onto old Zinfandel vineyards through the lean decades — the people who kept those century-old vines alive when there was no obvious reason to.

What we're pouring

Six wines, arranged to walk you from bright and crisp through to the biggest, darkest thing on the table.

Andis Sauvignon Blanc 202496% Sauvignon Blanc, 4% Sémillon

Cut grass, lemon blossom and passionfruit, with a green-apple bite. Mostly stainless steel, with a touch of new French oak on the Sémillon for texture. Sets the palate up rather than tiring it out.

Andis Barbera d'Amador 2023100% Barbera, estate vineyard at 1,550 feet

Barbera arrived in California around 1880 and has been quietly thriving in Amador ever since. Red cherry, cranberry and cedar, medium-bodied, with the bright natural acidity that makes Italian grapes such good company at dinner. If you cook a lot of tomato, this is your bottle.

Andis Cabernet Franc 2023100% Cabernet Franc, volcanic soils above 3,000 feet

Grown high enough that the growing season stretches long and slow. Spicy tobacco, graphite and black olive on the nose; black cherry and dark chocolate underneath. Fine tannins and a tang of acidity keep it lifted. Built for grilled lamb.

Painted Fields Old Vine Zinfandel 202290% Zinfandel, 5% Barbera, 5% Petite Sirah

Fruit from old Zinfandel blocks across the region, some of the vines over a century old. Layered blackberry and fresh raspberry, fine-grained tannins, and a bracing acidity that stops it short of jam. This is the wine that makes the case for the whole region.

Andis Petite Sirah 2022100% Petite Sirah, 330 cases produced

Deep, dark and firmly tannic. Blackberry, blueberry and black pepper with vanilla from the barrel. Rustic in the best sense of the word, and concentrated enough that a bottle put away now will reward you in five years.

Andis Shake Ridge Ranch Reserve Zinfandel 2022100% Zinfandel, red rocky soils at 1,700 feet — 121 cases produced

The finale, and the reason to come. Fermented in open-top tanks and punched down by hand twice a day, then eighteen months in barrel. Bold and generous, all bing cherry, with the peppery signature of the Foothills woven right through the tannins and a long blackberry finish. One hundred and twenty-one cases exist anywhere in the world. We have some of them.