Uncorking a Dream in Time of Uncertainty : Wine: Despite hard times for California’s vineyards, a small, independent vintner is taking a shot at success--and, so far, hitting the mark.

Adam Tolmach hoisted himself up onto the top of a barrel of wine, grabbed onto a scaffold, wedged his foot against another barrel and proceeded to climb.

He leaped from barrel to barrel, clambering through the scaffolding to one that was up near the ceiling of the barn-like building where the grapes of his tiny Ojai Vineyard winery lay fermenting inside their charred oak casks.

He was searching for the perfect red wine.

And Tolmach, industry experts say, may not only find something close to what he’s looking for, he’s probably going to be able to sell it, too.

If he succeeds, it will be at a time when 15% of the wineries in California’s Napa and Sonoma counties are for sale, and 20 wineries in those counties have filed for bankruptcy in the past 18 months, said Lewis Perdue, publisher of the Wine Business Insider newsletter.

The recession, a decline in per-capita wine consumption and 600 commercial wineries in California competing against each other have brought hard times for the state’s $3.5-billion industry.

Despite the industry’s slump, Tolmach thinks that he can make it.

“Our theory was to start incredibly small and then slowly grow,” said Tolmach, 38, who holds a degree in winemaking from UC Davis.

Tolmach brought some of the rich scarlet liquid down for a taste, slipping it out of the barrel in a foot-long, eyedropper-like implement known as a wine thief.

“I’m fanatically interested in quality wines,” said Tolmach, a soft-spoken man wearing a blue flannel shirt and longish curly hair.

For years, he was the quiet partner in the highly respected Au Bon Climat winery in Santa Barbara County, languishing in the shadow of his flamboyant former partner, winemaker Jim Clendenen, until the two dissolved their decade-old partnership in 1991.

After the breakup with Clendenen, Tolmach turned his attention to a small vineyard he had planted in 1981 on land that his mother owned in Oak View in Ventura County, near Ojai. He and his wife, Helen, had produced wine there part time since 1984, and now Ojai Vineyard is their main focus.

The winery remains extremely small, but Tolmach says it is profitable. Last year, the Tolmachs made just 3,300 cases of wine and took in about $200,000 in revenue.

But industry analysts say if he sticks to his hands-on method, gets lucky enough not to have any bad years with his grapes and proceeds extremely carefully, Tolmach stands a good chance of surviving--despite running such a small operation.

“He’s one of the best undiscovered winemakers in the country,” said David Dobbs, wine buyer and general manager for Red Carpet Wine & Spirits in Glendale, who sells several of Tolmach’s wines. “The guy makes stunning wines.”

He’d better.

The state’s wineries produced only about 375 million gallons of wine in 1992, down 12% from their record in 1987, according to Paul Gillette, publisher of the Wine Investor, an industry newsletter. And some of California’s best wineries are forced to sell their products at dramatic discounts to retailers who bottle them under house labels and sell them at a fraction of the retail price.

For example, Trader Joe’s, the Pasadena-based grocery chain, just bought the equivalent of 10,000 cases of Cabernet Sauvignon from a Napa Valley winery.

According to Bob Berning, the chain’s wine buyer, the wine normally retails for $22 a bottle, but the winemaker realized that if all that wine were released to the market, the price would be forced way down because the market would be flooded.

So much of the vintage was sold to Trader Joe’s, which bottled it under the chain’s label and is selling it for $5 a bottle.

As for Tolmach, analysts say his small size may serve as an advantage.

“He has the size of a winery that he can really maintain control over,” said Earl Singer, co-publisher of the Connoisseur’s Guide to California Wine, a wine reviewing publication.

It also helps that Ojai Vineyard has little debt. The farmland is rented for a nominal fee from Adam Tolmach’s mother--and most of the work is done by the Tolmachs themselves. They also saved money by buying their wine press second-hand.

The winery produces Pinot Noir, Syrah, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and a Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon blend. The Syrah, Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon grapes are grown on the 17 1/2-acre property, which Tolmach’s grandfather bought in the 1930s.

Grapes for Tolmach’s Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are purchased from vineyards in northern Santa Barbara and southern San Luis Obispo counties.

“I did virtually all the labor, with just a few exceptions, in planting the little 5 1/2-acre vineyard we have there,” Tolmach said. The couple press the wine, pour it into barrels and nurse it along, doing everything themselves except harvesting the grapes. Until last year, they bottled it by hand.

“I really enjoy the winemaking best of all,” Tolmach said, comparing it with selling or promoting the wine.

With such a hands-on approach, according to Singer, Tolmach can not only control quality, he can try to cash in on his reputation as a “cult” winemaker, someone who makes a limited amount of very good wine that wine snobs and other insiders rush to buy.

Indeed, local retailers said that because the winery is so small and the wine so respected, most of Tolmach’s wines sell out. And at $9 to $27 a bottle retail, he commands a fairly hefty price for a California wine.

“As people try them, they just keep coming back for them, because the wines are just outstanding,” said Paul Smith, who owns the Northridge Hills Liquor & Wine Warehouse.

Of course, being both small and new has a negative side.

Ojai Vineyard wines are what retailers call a “hand-sell” item, something that consumers who are not wine connoisseurs need to be cajoled into trying.

Knowing that he would need assistance in talking up the wines, Tolmach hired Angelus Wine Agency, the Los Angeles brokerage that distributes several of Santa Barbara County’s cult wines, including Au Bon Climat.

Jeff Welburn, the distributor’s co-owner, said he mostly concentrates on marketing Ojai Vineyard to high-end wine stores and upscale restaurants, including the Ivy and Chaya Brasserie in Los Angeles and Parkway Grill in Pasadena.

“In the wine shops, what we do is make sure we’re at their doorstep before the wine is even released,” Welburn said, talking about Ojai Vineyard and offering a taste of new vintages.

Because Tolmach is trying to push his Syrah, a red wine made in the style of wines from the Rhone Valley in France, and his white Sauvignon-Semillon blend, Welburn gives those an extra push.

Another possible problem for a small winery is that it only takes one or two bad batches of wine to ruin your reputation.

“The only thing that could kill him would be several years of bad wine,” said Singer, of the Connoisseur’s Guide, “if he got an infection of some kind in his grapes or in his barrels, or if he loses his sense of what vinegar smells like.”

Despite such dangers, Tolmach says he is determined to remain small.

“You can really go wrong by expanding,” Tolmach said. “I’ve seen it so many times. It’s usually because of too much money spent in the wrong places.”

For now, he said, the vineyard is doing well enough to keep the Tolmachs afloat, although they also depend on proceeds from the sale of his interest in Au Bon Climat.

It remains a tough business, however.

Consider the Chalone Wine Group Ltd. in San Francisco, one of the few publicly held wineries in the state. Chalone sells expensive, highly regarded wines, about 185,000 cases a year--60 times more than Tolmach’s winery. Despite Chalone’s lofty reputation, however, in the past four years, the winery has earned less than 1 cent per dollar of revenue.

Tolmach hopes to reap some increased profit as his wine becomes better recognized and begins to sell for even higher prices. And he said the winery will grow somewhat, but not to the point where it becomes unwieldy.

He knows that means he’ll probably never get rich.

According to Gillette, even if Tolmach’s winery increases its output to 6,000 cases, a level considered by many to be optimum for a small outfit, it will still garner modest profits, because it is expensive to make small amounts of wine by hand.

“They have to accept a reasonably modest lifestyle,” Gillette said. “That’s a sacrifice that has to be made. Either you’re an artist or an industrialist.”