Soledad, Calif.—Following up on the sale of its second nationally know brand, Hahn Family Wines is now focused on producing wines that highlight the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA.

Earlier this year, Hahn sold the sold Cycles Gladiator to the new operation Wine Hooligans. That sale followed Constellation Brands buying Rex Goliath in 2005.

Growing up not out
Hahn Family Wines was able to support those two national brands as well as several others with fruit from its 600-plus acres of estate vineyards in the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA within Monterey County as well as grapes sourced from throughout California.  “At one point we had eight different brands,” Clifton recently told Wines & Vines at the estate winery overlooking the Salinas Valley. “Now we’re not trying grow out we’re trying to grow up.”

Production has dipped from 400,000 cases per year to 375,000 following the sale of Cycles Gladiator and other auxiliary brands.

With its headquarters in Napa, Calif., Hahn Family Wines is focused on maintaining a national wholesale presence while increasing its footprint in the higher end on-premise and direct-to-consumer segments. Clifton became the director of winemaking in 2012 and assumed the role of general manager in April 2013, bringing on Greg Freeman as winemaker.

The Hahn Winery brand accounts for 221,000 cases of the company’s total production and is nationally distributed with a suggested retail price of $14. The company’s focus is now largely centered on the Hahn SLH brand and the high-end vineyard-designate Lucienne line. The Hahn SLH Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are from the Hahn estate vineyards and the Lucienne brand is made with the best lots of those four vineyards. Hahn still produces 50,000 cases under the Smith & Hook label, although that wine is made with grapes from the Paso Robles AVA and elsewhere in Monterey County, and 10,000 cases of Boneshaker. The Smith and Hook vineyards on the Hahn estate each were planted over to mainly Pinot Noir in a major transition largely funded through the Rex Goliath sale.

That replanting effort was the first major shift toward quality production. Andy Mitchell, Hahn Family Wines’ director of viticulture, has been on the estate for more than a decade. He said the property, which Swiss-American banking and finance executive Nicolaus “Nicky” Hahn purchased in the late 1970s, had been initially planted with Cabernet Sauvignon and other Bordeaux varieties that struggled to make high quality wines in the cool Salinas Valley. The Hahn family still owns the winery and vineyards.

“2005 was a major year. We took about 500 acres out of production,” Mitchell said. He recounts that at first he was unsure about pulling so many acres but he’s glad the company went through with the move. “I kind of questioned it early on, and boy I’m glad they didn’t listen to me.”

The switch came because of the market potential for Pinot Noir and because the Santa Lucia Highlands are far better suited to the Burgundian varieties. The Salinas Valley extends to the southeast from the Monterey Bay, which provides a regular, cooling influence through much of the northern half of the valley, where the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA is located.

Clifton said the focus for Hahn is building consumer recognition for the Santa Lucia Highlands appellation as a home of premium Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The company recently redesigned its label for the Hahn SLH brand to feature the “SLH” in big bold letters, while the “Hahn” name has been minimized. Hahn currently produces 30,000 cases of the Pinot Noir, suggested retail $35, and 20,000 of the Chardonnay, suggested retail $25, with the goal of doubling that production through distribution and on-premise accounts. The Lucienne line is the premier tier of the Hahn Family Wines brands and retails for around $50 and total production is less than 3,000 cases.

To help ensure quality, the winery recently acquired a FOSS analyzer for quick and accurate analysis in the lab as well as two Pellenc harvesters with the Selectiv’ sorting system on board to take fruit directly from the vineyard to fermentation tanks. “It actually saves us one step, a lot of time, on sorting the fruit,” Mitchell said.

The company also invested in a PureSense soil monitoring and irrigation technology to irrigate more efficiently and better manage water use on the estate.

Staking reputation on fruit quality
The Santa Lucia Highlands is known as the home of some of best Pinot Noir vineyards in the state. The Garys’ vineyard, owned by partners Gary Franscioni and Gary Pisoni, supports some of the highest-rated and most sought after California Pinot Noir.

A layer of coastal fog blankets the valley and highlands on most summer mornings, and it doesn’t dissipate until around 10 a.m. Temperatures during the ripening season only range from nighttime lows of 55° F to daytime highs of 75° F, and summers here are described as being similar to those in San Francisco. The appellation contains more than 6,000 acres of vineyards, most of which are planted at higher than 1,000 feet elevation.

The short period of direct sun is followed by regular winds from the bay that pick up in the late afternoon, bringing photosynthesis and ripening to a halt. “The cool temperatures and winds really extend our ripening season,” Mitchell said.

He said 2014 was the largest crop on the estate in his experience, and the early estimate on harvest is 5,500 tons, of which Hahn Family Wines kept about 3,700 and sold the rest.

While the region may be well suited for growing grapes, it’s not ideal for hosting well-heeled wine tourists. The tiny town of Soledad on the valley floor below the Hahn winery is not much more than a highway rest stop that also happens to be home to a state prison. The vegetable farms may offer a pleasing view from the highlands of a patchwork of green fields, but there’s little incentive for those property owners to support any type of tourism development.

On the other side of the county in the towns of Monterey and Carmel, affluent residents oppose any type of wine tourism development. “The hope has always been to get more of a tourism base, but that’s not happening,” said Dave Muret, the executive director of the growers’ group known as the Santa Lucia Highlands Wine Artisans. “It’s been a pitched battle for decades now.”

Without any major tourism development likely in the near future, there is even more pressure on the area’s growers and winemakers to stake their reputation on the quality of the fruit grown in the AVA. “Everybody in this appellation is on a mission—and it’s already been proven—to produce world-class wines, especially Pinot Noir, in the Santa Lucia Highlands,” Clifton said.