San Diegoโsย Miralani Makerโs District is nestled in an industrial park just a stoneโs throw from an airbase, the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. A coalition of craft beverage makers, the district includes a sakรฉ brewery, a meadery, a micro-distillery, and theย Charlie and Echoย winery and tap room. Itโs here that Los Pilaresย wines are made, and where Los Pilares co-owner and winemaker, Michael Christian, sits to talk about his wines and San Diego terroir.
Los Pilares is the garage winemaking dream-child of Christian and co-owner Coleman Cooney. The two came of age at the tail end of the 1970s in San Diego, where they grew to love drinking California wine in an era when Christian says it was still great. Life would take Christian to France for six years, and Cooney to Spain for seven, and then return them to California to drink wine together again. But things had changed during their time away, and they found themselves no longer enjoying the Golden Stateโs wines, which Christian says they found, โOverripe, overblown, and over-oaked.โย
So, in traditional California startup style, Christian and Cooney started making their own in Christianโs garage to recall the flavors they had fallen in love with in Europe. In the mid-90s, they planted a tiny, postage stamp vineyard in Cooneyโs backyard in a mountainous region of San Diego County called Alpine.
โAnd it got good,โ Christian says, reclining in a lawn chair inside the Charlie and Echo winery and tasting room, wearing a signature pair of indoor sunglasses. Fellow garage winemakers and enthusiasts Pelin Wood Thorogood and Jay McCarthy signed onto the project as partners, and Los Pilares was born.
When Christian began making wine in the garage, he had no formal training. Only a palette for French wines.
โI was literally using home winemakers recipes,โ he says. โThey were full of additions, especially sulphide and acid adjustments. Adding tannins, using fining agentsโall this shit.โ
He realized this process existed to make wine out of low-quality grapes, but that Colemanโs grapes didnโt need half the steps. So he took them out. Now,ย Charlie and Echo owner and winemaker Eric Van Drunen houses the entire Los Pilares operation in Miralani and is an integral part of the project as a winemaker alongside Christian and Cooney.
โIt is impossible to overstate Ericโs contribution,โ Christian says. โWe have a parasitic relationship with him.โ As he speaks, Van Drunen pours glasses of what is far and away the most creative, cerebral, and visionary of the Los Pilares lineup. Itโs an orange Muscat pet-nat namedย LaDona.
LaDona is the Los Pilares love letter to San Diego, past and present. โIt is an idea that was truly conceptual,โ Christian says of LaDona. โThe concept was to reinvent a San Diego viticultural tradition, where Muscat has been really important for 100 years or more.โ
Retiring and starting one’s own little winery is a San Diego behavior that dates back before prohibition, but the scene never truly recovered thereafter, Christian says. Back around 1965, most San Diego wineries were making Muscat.
โWhen I remembered all that business about Muscat,โ Christian says, โI started doing Nexus searches and I found articles from the 1950s. There was a Grape Day and a Grape Queen in Escondido. It was all about the Muscat harvest, which comes really early.โ This is a story, he says with the fervor of a passionate believer, about the death and rebirth of Muscat in San Diego.
Beyond just making wine he likes to drink, this is what truly drives Christian for his part in Los Pilares. He mourned what was a rich viticultural tradition. With his partners, he is setting out to revive it.
โI wanted to do something that is San Diego,โ he says. โI said to Coleman, ‘Just find some Muscat.โโ
They had never made a white wine, and what emerged was a bone-dry pet nat with a sharp contrast between the nose and the palate, equally chuggable and worthy of long consideration. It has a strong honeysuckle nose and some tannic bitterness from three days of skin contact. And the name? Of course, it comes fromย a San Diego radio personality. Here, a grape that had โcompletely gone out of fashionโ is on its way out of the ashes (both metaphorical and literal, in fire-burdened parts of the county).
The Los Pilares black pet-nat (BPN) is equally quaffable and hyperlocal. โIt relates to solving a San Diego county culinary problem,โ Christian says. Inspired by old-fashioned Lambrusco, the 100-percent Cabernet Sauvignon BPN is a tannic, tart, effervescent red designed to be served chilled. In Southern California, over half of the year is grilling season, with temperatures hovering between 68 and 80 degrees. On nights like these, the last thing you want is a big California Cabernet, and one tires of rosรฉ. This year, the BPN emerged more sour than in years past, and San Diegoโs craft beer community is coming out of the woodwork to try it at Charlie and Echo.
So is Muscat San Diego terroir? What grapes do best here? Los Pilares is on a mission to find out, but Christian says itโs too soon to tell.
โWe donโt know, which is why weโve planted so many varieties at a high-altitude vineyard,โ he says. โColeman and I think that if we do the right thing for 100 years, and thereโs not radical climate change, the grape vineyards of San Diego will be up in the mountains. But weโre guessing at what might work.โ
Without a centuries-old viticultural tradition, they have the freedom to try, fail, and try again. One thing Christian does know for sure: โThe future of San Diego wine is not to be monotonous.โ
Photos by Juliana Wisdom.