There are certain wineries that inspire reverence for me, and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to cover some of them. True legends, wineries like Corison, Emidio Pepe, San Giusto a Rentennano, Delille Cellars, Smith-Madrone, and Belle Ponte immediately come to mind.
Each of these wineries are special for unique reasons. Cathy Corison’s legend began because she was making wine in Napa before women were doing that sort of thing, and she was (and continues to be) extraordinarily good at it. Smith-Madrone is keeping America’s riesling torch shining bright while making really good traditional cabernet since 1971 on Spring Mountain.
Emidio Pepe was organic/biodynamic/sustainable before those terms meant much to most wine people and they use their unique approach to make some of the most quirkily, intriguing, and age worthy white and red wines in Italy, if not in the world. Rentennano, whose property’s history could inspire a novel (and inevitable Netflix series), might just be the best producer in Chianti and might just make the world’s best merlot (I’m looking at you, Cheval Blanc).
Delille is one of Washington State’s originals and, while it gets well-deserved global praise for its red wines, also makes one of America’s great white wines. Belle Pente, whose first vineyard was planted in 1994, is one of Oregon’s pioneers and makes a wide range of elegant white and red wines that shows off the diversity of what Oregon can offer inclusive of, and well beyond, chardonnay and pinot noir.
The newest edition to this list is the Santa Lucia Highlands’ ROAR wines and its founders and owners, the Franscioni family. The Santa Lucia Highlands, or SLH for short, is an American Viticultural Area (AVA) located south of Monterey Bay, California. Running along the Santa Lucia mountains, it was first planted to vine by Spanish missionaries and conquistadors. Its real development as a wine region, however, began in the 1970s. Although the Francionis landed in the SLH in 1907 and established themselves as farmers, it was current patriarch Gary that began the family’s focus on vitis vinifera, or wine grapes, in the 1990s.
Gary Franscioni with sons Adam and Nick
While other families like the Hahns (Hahn Estates) and Smith (Paraiso) seeded the modern SLH wine revolution in the two decades prior to Gary’s first plantings, it was the Pisoni family, who got involved in the 1980s, and the Franscionis, who together in my estimation have evidenced the region’s ability to be world class.
In the world of a product that’s been continuously made for 8,000 years, it’s a rare opportunity to talk shop with people who are doing something for the first time. So, logging on to Microsoft Teams to see Gary sitting on his couch with sons Nick and Adam ready to answer my questions was pretty damn cool.
Gary Franscioni began as a grower, selling his grapes to wineries. The first two vineyards he established, both in partnership with the Pisonis, have become California grand cru: Garys’ Vineyard (in 1996) and Rosella’s Vineyard (in 1997), which is named after his wife. Not long thereafter, ROAR was launched because “we wanted to make our own wine,” Gary told me, explaining that “our first vintage was 2001. It wasn’t a ‘why?’ but a ‘why not?’ We grow the grapes, let’s be meticulous with them. Growing the best grapes makes the best wine, and making wine makes you a better grower.” The Franscioni vineyard holdings have continued to grow as they have developed additional sites, including Soberanes and Sierra Mar. They also source from Clos Pepe and Pisoni vineyards as well.
It wasn’t always grapes for the Franscionis, however. “The area was underdeveloped in terms of wells and water systems [when] many of the uplands,” which are now resplendent in vines, “were grazing lands for cattle until the 50s.”
The Franscionis were some of the first well developers, which they used to farm beans “and some other stuff.” When the “the gold rush of planting vineyards” began in the 1980s, in part because “Prudential [Bank] was investing in land appreciation,” Gary was watching.
While SLH farmers started investing in permanent crops like grapes and citrus, Gary went off to college as a food science major. “I had a class and they took us to Napa. I fell in love with the beauty of vines, and since then I always had in the back of my mind that I’d [grow wine grapes].” While he knew he was going to farm all his life, “it took me 20 years to get the capital to plant the first vineyard and I haven’t stopped since then.”
Gary’s sons, Nick and Adam, make ROAR and vineyard management a family business. While both were born into it the business and spent their summers in the vineyards, however, Nick grew up having “an interest in doing other things.” Even though they were very familiar with the business - “vineyards are literally around the house” and it was “amazing to be around,” Nick yearned for “a bigger city, more neighborhood” growing up. “It’s very rural in the SLH,” he told me, “[it was] kind of [growing up on] a slightly isolated big property” surrounded by other big properties. “Because I was so far removed from the typical American experience, I left to go into business and technical school.”
However, after “really enjoying” that, he realized the family property was where his heart was. “I cut off everything I was doing and moved back to work with my dad and brother.” While it was good to explore and see what was beyond the vineyards, “[I] realized it wasn’t as great as I thought it’d be.”
Adam emphasized the rural nature of the SLH, noting that from where they live, and in the SLH in general, “it’s 15 minutes to drive to get milk, and everything between is farmland.” For him, “when you’re young you have this idea of being in the hustle and bustle of the city, but when you get older you have an appreciation for how beautiful the land is.” Plus, he added, “being fourth generation is pretty cool, and how my dad evolutionized the family farm, keeping that going, there’s a since of pride.”
Keeping that going has meant starting a winery together. “It’s a family business,” Nick said, that Gary described as being “about the passion of growing and making wine. We look at quality, not quantity.” Production is 5,000-6,000 cases per year, which is enough for the four person team of Gary, Nick, Adam, and winemaker Scott Shapley. “We have a lot of high touch to it, very detailed,” Gary said, “so we like the size; it allows us to be very selective.” If they were to expand, the “production approach would have to change. We think it’s at a pretty optimal size right now.” The growth trajectory is limited by family size and vineyard acreage, and they all agreed that “we’re comfortable with the product and in a pretty happy zone. We just want to make the best [wine].”
Doing that in the SLH has a significant advantage. “You can go to Oregon and, pick a number, five out of 10 [vintages], you might have frosts or heat waves. Same with Burgundy, three out of 10 good years,” Gary told me. But in the SLH, Nick pointed out, “temperatures are so steady off the Monterey Bay [that] you don’t have spring frosts. We get cool summers that extend the growing season. Day temperatures are perfect for pinot [noir]. Dad believes it’s the weather, nine out of 10 good years, so if you miss [a vintage] you’re doing something wrong.” Nick also pointed to their proximity to the sea, the sloped vineyards, and well-draining soils as advantages. Adam added the absence of frosts: “We hear about that up north and how it’s a problem [but thankfully we don’t experience it].”
Despite these advantages, the region turns out a wide range of wine quality and even its best examples don’t often make the world mainstage. “The SLH can be a bit top heavy,” Nick explained. “You can find excellent wines, but there aren’t a huge number of them and they’re small production. There isn’t the mass amount available across the country” to spread the SLH gospel. While the average SLH wine is “very good,” Nick said, there isn’t “a lot of heavy hitters to make [the SLH] a top appellation, which prevents the SLH from getting top level exposure.”
Gary pointed to another dynamic at play in the SLH, that of big names not located in the SLH growing or buying large amounts of SLH fruit and making a mix of designated and non-designated wine. Some of these names, like Gallo, are now buying up large amounts of vineyards and land. “You worry about losing the artisan flavor” when that happens, Gary said. “If you go to the Russian River Valley, there are 90 wineries that are making small lots of high end wine. Down here, there’s 4, maybe 5.”
That the SLH isn’t a flagship California AVA (my words, not theirs) isn’t a “notoriety problem,” Nick said. “We like that [the SLH] is a hidden gem [because] you don’t have a ton of people flocking in and inundating our small infrastructure. It’s kind of nice to be kept under the radar, to be that secret at the table that gets busted out and no one knows. We want more love, but it’s a balancing act: [we] don’t want too much to take away from the beautiful rural aspect.”
Adam added that while “it would be nice to have some great food options [in the SLH] like Napa [has], when people come here and they’re shocked at why it’s so beautiful, it’s because it’s rural.”
This point of local infrastructure and its role in how an AVA’s reputation develops is one I encountered when covering California’s Anderson Valley a few years ago. While the wines of the two AVAs are distinctly different, this factor is not: Both are remote regions with little visitor infrastructure like hotels and restaurants, and lack extensive networks of roads in, through, and around themselves. Being off the beaten path and with little ability to house or feed visitors means few people visit.
Not being able to build robust tourism infrastructure makes it very hard to develop a national or international reputation. One of my favorite Oregon winemakers, Shane Moore, once told me that wine tastes best when drinking it at the winery or with the winemaker. And from my experience, he’s right. It’s much easier to develop lifelong customers and sell wine that way, and it’s incredibly powerful marketing as it develops passionate word-of-mouth ambassadors. Limited foot traffic means limited opportunities to build those deep and long-lasting connections with customers.
Given this, the wine has to do all the talking. When I get samples I’m really excited about, like these, I like to share them with friends whenever possible. So, I emailed a few friends and we met up to spend an evening with them, which is what you really should do with these wines. They’re great wines out of the gate, but they evolve. Patience and introspection is rewarded, and they inspire and dominate conversation.
Nick described the house style as “complexity, layers, evolution of a wine.” He noted that they can be “tricky for critics to review; how long are they experiencing them? [From] first to last sip, how much does that bottle change?” His implication is that with ROAR wines, the answer revealed by time is “a lot.”
“One of the most important parts” about ROAR wines, Nick said, “is not having something monolith. We want evolution [that comes from having] backbone and structure [along with] site identity. They evolve and change, and that’s about layering in complexity.” ROAR wines should also have, he said, “some power behind them.”
Building this type of profile, the layering of complexity with power as Nick called it, comes from a lot of attention towards the fruit, Gary said. “We pass by every vine every 12 days, we give each vine the opportunity to make the best fruit we can. We do that for the 100-day growing season, we’re very dedicated.”
It’s not coincidental that the region’s best wines mostly come from the vineyards owned and managed by the Franscionis and Pisonis. While there are few high end vineyards in the SLH that are unassociated with either family - I’m thinking Morgan’s Double L and Talbott’s Sleepy Hollow - the list is quite short. When high end wineries without SLH vineyard holdings look to make SLH wines that fit into their portfolio, it’s the Franscioni and Pisoni vineyards they hope to secure.
Case-in-point is the new Rombauer SLH Pinot Noir that we profiled in March 2023. Essentially, after tasting pinot grown throughout California and Oregon, Rombauer wouldn’t commit to pinot noir unless they got access to Franscioni vineyards, and they’re not interested in expanding production unless it’s with more Franscioni fruit. Other notable wineries producing high scoring wines from Franscioni and/or Pisoni fruit include Patz & Hall, Testarossa, Kosta Browne, Twomey, Miner, Clarice Wine Company, and Siduri.
The ROAR business model is often described as “grower-producer,” meaning that they grow the grapes and produce them, and sell some as well. Given the high demand for Franscioni fruit and the producer aspect of their business, I wanted to know how they manage those two aspects that I thought might end up competing with each other.
While they were quick to dismiss any issues related to competing interests, Gary’s initial response to this question was about the variety of what they produce, which I think was to make the point that by things being a bit complicated, there’s actually little competition that bubbles up.
“We get different clones and do different selections to get a mixture of [grapes] that ripen at different times,” Gary said, explaining essentially that they want to “get as many variables as possible” for themselves and their clients. “Different blocks, different clones, difference spices,” Gary explained, offer ROAR and their clients options, defusing competition over resources.
From there, Nick noted, “other producers are contracted; everyone has their blocks, and there’s hardly room for anyone new. We know when each client wants their fruit to come in, we know what their ferments are like, their winemaking approaches.” At the same time, “it’s interesting to learn from them too. Certain tactics, [like] why they choose certain pick dates, their ferment approaches, [it’s] always interesting to hear from and learn from different winemakers. Adam [Lee, for example] has a unique approach to making Clarice. Everyone is fixed in their place, they know and trust the fruit, they don’t want to move [to another block or vineyard].”
The fruit only does so much of the work, however, because it also matters how it gets treated in the winery. “Mother Nature has a lot to do with it,” Gary said, “but we do all we can” to maximize the fruit’s potential. “We give [the fruit] all the love we can” once it comes in. Their process includes cold soaks in the 17 to 21-day range, normally, during which the grapes get their fair share of punch downs. They also use “the best oak - all French, and we turn them over every year-and-a-half,” Gary told me. Most fruit doesn’t take well to entirely new oak, but “SLH fruit can take [it]; don’t forget, we have good acidity here. A lot of the time, we have to wait for the acid [levels in the grapes] to drop [before harvesting them].”
Having tasted the wines, I was surprised by this news of entirely new French oak on each wine as none of them presented as obviously having been raised in this manner. I’m hardly ever a fan of 100% new oak on wines as that’s just not my palate, but to Gary’s point, their SLH fruit can take it. They’re significantly structured wines, and so maybe I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had focused on this aspect of the wine. The aromatics and flavors, sure, there was evidence of French oak, but it didn’t suggest to me that it was made entirely in new barrels. I normally shy away from fully-new oaked wines when I’m footing the bill, but I’d make an exception for ROAR.
It’s not a stretch to say that the ROAR’s wines are among the my favorite California pinot noirs. The chardonnay, from Sierra Mar vineyard, is also quite good. But it was the syrah, from Rosella’s Vineyard, that is the most memorable from the line up; months later, it’s the wine I most wish I could sip whilst writing this article.
“We wish we could produce more” of the syrah, Nick told me. “We’ve produced it since 2003, maybe 2005. We have a few acres of it on each ranch.” But alas, as with syrah anywhere in America, the market will only take so much. “Talk to anyone in the industry, they love syrah. But customers don’t rave about it, it’s hard to market, there’s a stigma about it.” However, “it’s very durable, very flexible, it can give you a whole bunch of different flavors. It will probably past the test of time with climate change. I’m a believer that one day the market will come around [to it], [it’ll have] a Sideways pinot moment.”
Wines from the SLH can have an inherent richness more significant that most other growing areas in the United States. The best quality examples deliver layers and complexity beyond most California pinots, chardonnays, and syrahs. Raised by the best, as exemplified by the ROAR line up, they’re further elevated by substantive and juicy acid that makes that richness dynamic.
It’s rare that I have zero apprehension in recommending every wine tasted in a single article, but this is one of those occasions. The wines of the Franscionis live up to the legend of the family’s grape-growing prowess, and beyond that there’s something special about these wines vis-a-vis wines made by other producers that use Franscioni fruit. It’s sort of a je ne sais quoi element, I think some kind of evidence of a home court advantage. There’s a deliciousness to them that puts them at the center of a group’s attention and continues to demand that kind of attention until they’re gone.
Tasting notes and scores are below. When it comes to tasting chardonnay and pinot noir together, I tend to prefer the Burgundian tradition of tasting the reds before the whites, which I did here. However, given the heaviness and prospect of gaminess with the syrah, I saved it for after the chardonnay. One more note, for what it’s worth, this was the first time that I’ve preferred a winery’s Rosella’s designate to its Garys’.
2021 ROAR Soberanes Vineyard Pinot Noir – The rich, deep nose offers concentrated cherry and blackberry compotes. The sweetness continues to draw your nose back into the glass, revealing licorice, black pepper, and dried Mission fig. On the palate it’s of medium stature with tight, gritty tannin and big, juicy acid. The balance is spot on. Flavors include cherry, blackberry, black tea, blood orange, kirsch, and baking spice. Continued swirling eventually evidences some floral notes. It’s an elegant powerhouse of a wine that could use a good three to five years to unwind, after which it should continue to evolve for another five-plus years. 94 points. Value: A.
2021 ROAR Garys’ Vineyard Pinot Noir – The nose is soft, pretty, and a bit earthy with moist soil, a bit of fungal quality, purple flower petals, Bing cherry, and rhubarb. Medium bodied, it has broad tannins and mellow yet juicy acid. While sturdy, the palate is soft. The tannins gain grit quickly, stiffening the structure while helping the wine find balance. The flavors are similarly mellow, and include sweet cherry, raspberry, lilac, white pepper, and maybe a bit of dried mint. While all of the 2021 ROAR pinots should be decanted if being consumed young, this one needs it more than the others. I’d give this one at least five years to age if possible. 94 points. Value: A.
2021 ROAR Rosella’s Vineyard Pinot Noir – The fruit-forward nose wafts a core of really deep cherry, strawberry, and red plum. With extended air it develops love florals and some earthiness. This one is full bodied, very round and plush. At first it’s soft, but air draws out the super finely grained tannins and helps it develop a sensational mouthfeel. The flavor profile includes sweet cherry and raspberry, violet, spicy black pepper, and plum. Extended aeration transitions it from red-fruited to dark-fruited in nature as the tannins get grippier. At the same time, it develops a non-bitter black tea note. It’s the least developed of the 2021 pinots, but it also has the best balance. I’d be tempted to lay this one 17 down for at least seven years. 95 points. Value: A.
2021 ROAR Sierra Mar Vineyard Pinot Noir – The nose has a saline element that jumps out of the glass, which is then followed by a variety of berry marmalades, cigar box, candied citrus rind, and a bit of fungal funk. Full bodied, it remains fresh and bright. The tannins are broader than the other pinots, while the acid is balanced and the structure nicely integrated; it’s the most lifted wine of the lineup despite its weight. Red plum, raspberry, cherry, and blood orange represent the fruit flavors, while white pepper and mint add some spice and accentuate the tannic grip. This one might need the most time of the pinots, suggesting a solid ten years of aging potential. 95 points. Value: A.
2021 ROAR Sierra Mar Vineyard Chardonnay – Just like the Sierra Mar pinot, the first aroma to meet your nose is saline. After that it’s cantaloup rind, lemon curd, and vanillin delivered in a very broad and nostril-filling manner. Full bodied, it’s quite smooth with a sweet acid that’s neither juicy nor sharp. The sensuous mouthfeel and balance is expertly constructed. The flavor profile is a touch sweet and dominated by lemon tart. Beyond that there’s tangerine, preserved orange peel, slate, and white paper. I’m not sure if extended aging is going to make this any better, and that’s not a bad thing. 94 points. Value: A-.
2021 ROAR Rosella’s Vineyard Syrah – Classic varietal nose of brambleberry, black plum, cherry, garrigue, hickory, and violet. Barely full bodied, the balance is elite as the dense, heartily grained tannin and juicy, thick acid clearly love each other. The mouthfeel is absolutely gorgeous even as the tannin presents substantial grip and builds a super dense wine. Flavors include dark plum, dark cherry, menthol tobacco, worn leather, violet, and red meat. It’s been a long time since I’ve had an American syrah this good; it’s a modern, American take on Côte Rôtie. While delicious now, I agree with Nick’s (much more informed) observation that this will come into its own in eight to ten years. 95 points. Value: A.
