Photos by Ryan Lely
While others around them are feeling the pinch, Adler Fels Winery just finished its biggest year ever.
With low overhead, the talents of a third-generation Sonoma winemaker and four whimsical product lines priced between $7.99 and $14.99 a bottle, the relatively obscure producer is poised for continued growth.
“Wines in the higher price ranges are suffering in this economy, but people haven’t stopped drinking wine. They’re just trading down,” said Dana Fehler, the firm’s sales and marketing manager. “Because we specialize in value wines, it’s a great niche for now.”
The original winery was founded in 1979 in the Mayacamas Mountains above Hood Mountain Regional Park by David and Ayn Coleman. They named their company after a nearby rock outcropping called Eagle Rock (Adler Fels in German), and began to make award-winning gewürztraminer and sauvignon blanc from Russian River grapes, bottling about 4,000 cases a year.
Making the most of abundant harvests, they expanded in the late 1990s and introduced lower-priced labels that were produced from bulk wine in facilities in a Santa Rosa industrial park. By the time U.S. billionaire Stephen Adams bought it in 2004, Adler Fels had become best known as a wine negociant, buying finished wines on the bulk market, then blending and bottling them at the Santa Rosa facility under its own labels and those of private retail clients.
With a Sonoma County pedigree that stretches back three generations, head winemaker Harry Parducci Jr. now guarantees their quality. Fehler calls him “the man behind the curtain.” Parducci has spent 20 years establishing relationships with the brokers who sell him juice from some of Napa and Sonoma counties’ best-known wineries.
As Fehler explains, the wine business is never constant. Sometimes harvests are too big, or wineries get too many gallons of one varietal and not enough of another, or they wind up with an extra batch of excellent wine that doesn’t fit into their current mix. They reroute it to the bulk market, where winemakers like Parducci buy the finished product.
Wine lovers on limited budgets profit from the detour. Big Ass and Adler Fels brands sell for about $14.99 a bottle; Leaping Lizard at $11.99 a bottle, and Coyote Creek for $7.99 a bottle. The Big Ass label includes cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, syrah and zinfandel. The Adler Fels label produces cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, Eagle Rock Red (a blend), gewürztraminer, petite sirah, sauvignon blanc and syrah. The Leaping Lizard brand includes cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, merlot, sauvignon blanc and zinfandel, while Coyote Creek produces cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, merlot and white zinfandel.
Last year Adler Fels produced about 100,000 cases of its own brands, less than 4,000 which were produced at the estate winery. It made another 335,000 cases for private clients across the country who wanted their own brands but without incurring the full expense of growing, harvesting, crushing, aging, blending and bottling their own wines.
“Harry is amazing at blending to keep the core brands so consistent customers can depend on them,” Fehler said. “He also has relationships with brokers that are so good he gets the cream of the crop.”
The model has been successful enough that Adler Fels has been wildly profitable, even in the face of America’s crumbling economy, and is looking at new ways to grow.
“We do well with people from their late 30s to their 60s, but we need hipper millennial labels,” said Fehler. She’ll be working on that in the coming months, but is focused on the Feb. 1 launch of a Sonoma Valley tasting room, the first ever for a company more accustomed to flying under the public’s radar.
The mountaintop Adler Fels winery is closed to the public, as is the adjacent Alsatian castle originally built by the Colemans. Stephen Adams uses the house as a vacation home and opens it to special guests for trade events and corporate entertaining. The new tasting room will broaden the brands’ exposure beyond the VIP crowd.
“We’re taking over The Wine Room at Warm Springs Road and Highway 12,” she said, “and will be leasing it for a year from Tom Smothers.” In addition to Adler Fels, Big Ass, Leaping Lizard and Coyote Creek, employees will still pour Smothers’ Remick Ridge wines.
Adler Fels brands do well in the retail market because of their creative packaging and their fantastic price points, said Franco Minniti, the winery’s Oregon distributor. In a crowded wine market, it’s the labels that attract the first-time buyer, he said, “but their quality takes over from there.”
The Adler Fels tasting room opens Sunday, Feb.1 at 9575 Hwy. 12, Kenwood. 707.833.6131. www.adlerfels.com
