A few years ago sangiovese was being hailed as the next great red wine in America. But a funny thing happened on the way to the marketplace — people weren’t buying it.

John And Ellen Benish, who own Benessere Vineyards in St. Helena, and Chris Dearden, the general manager who also makes wine for the label, flew in the face of all that, and in the late-1990s planted sangiovese in the estate vineyard, a location that was perfect for cabernet sauvignon. And they are now successfully selling that sangiovese.

“We did due diligence on what would grow there,” said Dearden. “We looked at the soil, the temperatures, the winds, and we found that Italian varietals would grow well there, too. I love Italian wines and so do the Benishes. The idea that we could create something no one else could do excited us.”

Why would Benessere be successful where others had failed? “They (others) did a lot of things wrong,” Dearden said.

“They used the wrong clonal selections, and they put it in areas where it would grow vigorously and produce a lot of crop.” He pointed out that thinning is very important — Benessere gets only one cluster per shoot — but many of the early sangiovese producers thought they could get big crops.

“Much of it was in the wrong area. They used the wrong root stock. And they picked too early.”

The winemaking techniques also were wrong, he said. “People were making it (sangiovese) like cab, but it’s a finicky grape, more like pinot noir.” It has to be handled just like pinot noir, he added.

A look at Benessere’s offerings might make you think you’re in Italy. In addition to sangiovese, you’ll find such names on the bottles as Sorridente (“smiling”), Scintillare (“sparkling”), Frizzante (also “sparkling”) and Rosato (“pinkish”), and the more familiar pinot grigio. Other Italian varietals produced in limited quantities include sagrantino and aglianico, and Dearden makes a small amount of grappa of trebbiano.

The Italian influence is also found in the name — Benessere means “prosperity” or “well-being” in Italian — and the wine club, called Buoni Amici, which means “good friend.”

One proprietary wine that does not carry an Italian name, but includes sangiovese, along with cabernet sauvignon, syrah and merlot, is called Phenomenon, and Dearden whimsically calls it a “Super Napan,” a takeoff on the Italian producers’ Super Tuscan wines which blend sangiovese and cabernet sauvignon.

“People smile when they hear it,” he said. “We take our wine seriously, but not ourselves.”

But it’s not all Italian. Benessere also makes a small amount of pinot noir from Carneros and two zinfandels — one from its 34-acre estate vineyard and another called BK Collins, from 85-year-old vines planted in a vineyard across the road — and syrah. There’s also some merlot planted, but most of it is being budded over to aglianico, sagrantino, syrah and cabernet sauvignon. “We put in merlot partially to help cash flow in the beginning — we sold some and used some in our blends,” Dearden said. To also aid cash flow until the sangiovese started to produce, he said the facility provided some custom crushing, although that is diminishing.

“We’re a niche,” he said. “We have no aspirations to go head to head with the big ones. We just want to produce some good Italian varietals and zinfandel.”

Rich history

The estate has a rich history. Located on Big Tree Road, it’s the northernmost winery in St. Helena. “From arrowheads and spearheads that were found in the ground, we know that it was inhabited by Wappo Indians,” Dearden said.

In the 1940s, the property was turned into a ranch. The existing house, which is occupied by the Benishes, still has some of the original beams and the fireplace, and the back portion of the winery is the original barn.

The property was sold in the 1960s and became a thoroughbred horse ranch. For a while the property was used by Duckhorn Vineyards as a plant nursery, and in the late 1970s, it was purchased by Charles and Lucy Shaw, who converted the barn into a winery. The Shaws held the property until 1991 when the couple divorced and he moved to Chicago. Shaw’s name resurfaced several years ago when Fred Franzia introduced his Charles Shaw brand, better known as Two Buck Chuck.

Purchased in 1994

During the period when a bank held the property following the default, Tom Eddy, who was named trustee for the estate, looked after it and kept it in good order until 1994 when the Benishes saw it. They had come to Napa Valley to attend the wine auction, fell in love with the area, and decided to buy the property.

The Benishes had taken a barge trip through Italy some years before and were taken with the continuity of the wineries they saw there — generation after generation carrying on the tradition of family businesses. They wanted something they could enjoy themselves, then pass along to their children.

The vineyard, planted to chardonnay, was infected with phylloxera, so the vines were pulled out. That’s when Dearden started to look at what the terroir called for. In planting the sangiovese, Dearden used the few clones that were available here, but he talked with Jim Moore, a Cal-Ital specialist who worked with the La Famiglia di Robert Mondavi brand and who put him in touch with two Italian consultants, Alberto Antonini and Attilio Pagli. They brought barrel samples to the U.S. to show Benish and Dearden what they could do, and the Americans were impressed.

“We had some clones (of sangiovese) here, but, just like with pinot noir, we needed to find the clones we wanted to use, and the rootstock and where to plant each,” Dearden said.

He tried the Italian clones, “the best they had,” and later planted a test plot “to see how they would do,” he said. That was in 1998. “We’re still experimenting.” In 2004 he budded over four of those clones.

“People now know that we’re making some good sangiovese, and also some good pinot gris,” Dearden said. So he decided to move on to something different — he planted a half-acre with sagrantino, a dark, inky, highly-tannic red grape that even in Italy is not widely produced (only 250 acres total). Benessere’s is the only sagrantino in Napa Valley.

“It gives us a chance to make something different,” he said. Five cases of it were presented at the recent Premiere Napa Valley trade auction where it was purchased by the Culinary Institute of America.

 “People came up to me and said, ‘This is what Premiere is supposed to be all about, not just another variation of a cab,’” he said.

‘Loved working in agriculture’

Dearden is a third generation Californian, born and raised in Porterville. He enrolled at UC Davis, and majored in enology, viticulture and agricultural economics. His senior year he served an internship at Schramsberg Vineyards.

In 1986, after graduation, he moved to Napa. “I figured I’d just start here, rather than going somewhere else and eventually ending up here,” he said. He worked at William Hill for a year, then at Mont St. John (now Madonna Estate) and enrolled in UC Berkeley to obtain his MBA degree.

He also worked for Heublein on the Christian Brothers, Inglenook and Beaulieu Vineyards brands — “I have the distinction of making the last wine at Christian Brothers,” he said — and he credits his current success to his tutor there: Andre Tchelistcheff, the legendary winemaker at BV. Also playing a major role in his career were Greg Fowler, the winemaker under whom he worked at Schramsberg, and Larry Brooks, who made wine at Acacia at the time.

As he completed his MBA program, Dearden joined the sales team at Seguin Moreau, a barrel maker. “I tasted with some of the top names in the wine industry,” he said. “The barrel guys have great palates because they taste so many wines.”

In 1995 he was introduced to the Benishes. He was hired as employee No. 1 and, in addition to making the wine, he was general manager with responsibility for every other aspect of the business, including sales, which he handled until 2004 when he hired Andy Gridley.

Speaking about the Benishes, Dearden said, “We work together as a team. We’ve done everything together, even though they’re not here all the time.” The couple spends a total of about three months a year in Napa Valley; the rest of the time they live in Chicago where he operates a successful school bus company, the oldest continually operating bus company in the nation.

Winery dog

When they first started the winery, Benish told Dearden, “Every winery has a dog. We need a winery dog.” Dearden went to the pound and found Chico, who became employee No. 2. When Chico died, a small vineyard in front of the winery was re-named Chico’s Vineyard, grapes from which are used to make a limited amount of Port wine.

Later, while driving in Carneros, Dearden saw some big, black Newfoundlands and told the owner that he needed a new winery mascot. The mother, Storm,  had given birth to three litters and was finished with her mothering duties, so the owner allowed her to go with Dearden to Benessere.

“She’s a 150-pound doorstop,” Dearden said.