Dunne on Wine: Luscious landscaping: Grapes turn Loomis into Provence

Once a dream comes to fruition, then what? Find a use for the fruit.

That's the challenge facing residents of Clos du Lac, a gated community on a rolling plateau above the American River on the outskirts of Loomis, 30 miles northeast of Sacramento.

Every fall, the grapevines with which they've landscaped their yards bear a new crop. Their homes are large, but their cellars can hold only so many barrels of wine.

They're looking for buyers for their grapes, and toward that end, they had a party Sunday afternoon to showcase their homemade wines as well as commercial releases by vintners who already have discovered their fruit.

Hardie Setzer was there. He's the rancher who in the 1980s began to lay out about 200 acres of rangeland for a high-end subdivision.

He retained San Francisco architect Henrick Bull to design the community. Bull was big on the vineyard villages in the south of France. He saw Setzer's development as a chance to transport a slice of Provence to the oak scrubland of Northern California.

"This is what you should do here," Setzer recalls Bull telling him as he rolled out drawings of courtly estates tucked among vineyards, fruit trees and ponds. "You can make it as nice as the south of France."

True to that vision, the homes of Clos du Lac have stone facing and red-tile roofs. Outdoor pizza ovens, pétanque courts and potagers aren't unheard of. Stands of cypress and olive trees are here and there.

And the front yards of virtually all 89 homes in the development are given over to small vineyards: 100 vines here, 200 there.

Other commonly held blocks scattered through the community bring the total vineyard holdings to about 17 acres.

More than half the total is planted to the black grape cabernet franc, associated more with Bordeaux than Provence, but it's the variety Sacramento grocer Darrell Corti recommended when vineyard developer Ron Mansfield began to plant vines 15 years ago.

"It likes that kind of climate," Corti says in explaining why he suggested cabernet franc. "And there's not a lot of it around. I felt that if they decided to sell the grapes, it's a lot more practical to sell cabernet franc from the foothills than cabernet sauvignon."

Corti also was mindful that the miniature vineyards would be maintained by agrarian greenhorns – and that cabernet franc is "an easier variety to take care of than a lot of other varieties."

Clos du Lac's residents help with the pruning, irrigating and harvesting of the vines, but their homeowners association has turned over much of that responsibility to GK Vineyard Services, a viticultural management company run by neighbors Kevin Stevenson and Grant Koch.

On Sunday, as Koch pulled his homemade pizzas from the Italian oven that he and his wife, Yoka, attached to their residence, winemakers talked up the development's fruit, especially the cabernet franc, customarily a blending grape but increasingly popular as a stand-alone varietal in California.

"It's dynamite," Jim Taylor says of Clos du Lac's cabernet franc. Taylor, who with his wife, Lynda, and son Ryan run Mt. Vernon Winery in Auburn, began to buy Clos du Lac's fruit six years ago and have produced award-winning releases with the varietal.

Nearby, Steve Burch of Burch Hall Winery in Grass Valley was pouring tastes of his 2004 and 2006 cabernet francs made from Clos du Lac grapes.

"The cabernet franc up here is some of the best I've worked with in the state," says Burch, who also has used the variety from Sonoma County and Napa Valley. "It makes a wine in the style of the Loire Valley. It's approachable when young, with cabernet franc's classic tobacco smell, some minerality, and cranberry and cherry flavors."

Burch also makes the community's own wines, put up under the Clos du Lac label, designed by celebrated Berkeley graphic artist David Lance Goines. Those wines, however, are kept within the community to avoid conflict with Clos du Lac Cellars, an unaffiliated winery near Ione in Amador County.

About the writer:

• Call Bee wine columnist Mike Dunne, (916) 321-1143. Read his blog at www.sacbee.com/ appetizers. Back columns: www.sacbee.com/dunne.