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ERROR: type should be string, got "https://www.sfgate.com/wine/thirst/article/Vineyard-wanderer-Tegan-Passalacqua-makes-his-own-5339304.php\nVineyard wanderer Tegan Passalacqua makes his own mark\nTurley Wine Cellars viticulturist Tegan Passalacqua is now focusing on his own label, Sandlands.\nPhoto: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle\nIt all comes back to the Subaru.\nAnyone who has seen Tegan Passalacqua in recent years probably encountered him driving one of a trusty string of Outbacks, hopscotching vineyards throughout the state. Currently, he's at 400,000 miles and counting.\nBy day, Passalacqua is winemaker and viticulturist at Turley Wine Cellars, constantly minding more than two dozen vineyards throughout the state.\nAs keen readers may recall (http://is.gd/passlq), this endless road trip has earned Passalacqua a reputation as California's great vineyard wanderer. A relatively lazy recent morning encompassed Napa, Calistoga, a jag to Alexander Valley to look at Turley's 101 Vineyard, then back to Passalacqua's St. Helena office in time for what the British would call elevenses.\nIn the spare time between stops, the 36-year-old has hunted mostly forgotten patches of vines in unexpected corners - century-old field blends in Contra Costa County, Verdelho in the far reaches of Lodi - and shared those discoveries with friends. Many of today's more interesting California wines somehow link back to Passalacqua.\nOne question always lingered: What about his own ambition? Even Indiana Jones expected a dose of glory.\nThat question is officially answered next month, with the debut of Sandlands, Passalacqua's own label.\n\"I felt these vineyards had tons of quality,\" he says, \"and no one was really paying that much attention.\"\nPassalacqua's day job continues as usual. With just 625 cases of wine, compared with Turley's 35,000, Sandlands is the very definition of side project. But it echoes a tradition of Turley veterans who developed their own projects.\nFormer winemaker Ehren Jordan now runs his Failla label full time; owner Larry Turley's sister Helen Turley, his first winemaker, developed her Marcassin label into one of the state's most sought-after, if contentious, wines.\nRoster of castoffs\nThus Sandlands has enjoyed the sort of prelaunch mystique reserved for projects with operational budgets in the eight figures, rather than one run from the modest Napa bungalow where Passalacqua lives with his wife, Olivia, and their newborn son, William. When a handful of Sandlands bottles, their labels affixed with tape, appeared at a recent New York trade tasting, the city's top wine buyers flocked around the table.\n\"Every single person said, make sure you get to Tegan's wines,\" recalls Juliette Pope, beverage director of New York's Gramercy Tavern.\nThis bustle is particularly odd because Sandlands is, essentially, a roster of castoffs.\nThere is Carignane from the century-old Del Barba vineyard in Contra Costa County, an old parcel planted alongside Highway 160 near the Antioch Bridge. It is arguably the most finely textured example in a long time of a grape that was long disrespected. (Sandlands has also bottled that variety from the Bedrock Vineyard in Sonoma Valley and from a plot near the cemetery in the Mendocino town of Ukiah.)\nThere's Grenache from 80-year-old vines in Loomis (Placer County), northeast of Sacramento. And a bit of a new California starlet, Trousseau, from 1.1 acres of vines Passalacqua grafted onto old Merlot stumps in George Bohan's vineyard on the remote Sonoma Coast. That baby Trousseau has impressive neighbors, including Hirsch Vineyards and Helen Turley's own Marcassin estate.\nThe most traditional wine: Syrah from the Santa Lucia Highlands, a possible tribute to one of Passalacqua's mentors, Alain Graillot in the Rhone's Crozes-Hermitage.\nThere's also Chenin Blanc from 35-year-old head-trained vines in Amador's Story vineyard, a wine made not in the quick-and-dirty spirit of most California Chenin but fermented in barrels with the meticulousness reserved for great white Burgundy.\nThis underscores Passalacqua's obsession with Chenin, born during an apprenticeship in South Africa's Swartland, one of the grape's adopted homelands. (Disclaimer: Do not mention this grape to Passalacqua if you want a conversation shorter than 20 minutes.)\nIf this seems like a grab bag, Sandlands has a common thread: All these grapes, excepting the Trousseau, are grown on sandy soils, hence a name worthy of a Frank Herbert sequel. It was borrowed from a wine made by Passalacqua's friend Abe Schoener of the Scholium Project.\nTexture is key\nWhat's with the sand?\n\"I really don't know,\" Passalacqua says. \"In all honesty, it wasn't a conscious decision.\"\nThe rich texture evident in all the Sandlands wines, however, provided me with a clue. Soil density can affect both a wine's quality and its texture. When grown in coarse, sandy soils, high-yielding grapes like Grenache, but white wines like Chenin and evidently Carignane, too, display a particular suppleness. Reds display a quiet side to tannins that could otherwise be more stoic.\n\"There is,\" Passalacqua acknowledges, \"something to the structure of the wines that attracted me.\"\nSandlands is also a rumination on California wine's past charms. Reasonable enough, since Passalacqua has become an informal historian of California wine and is a principal in the Historic Vineyard Society, which works to preserve old California vineyards.\nThe label hinges on three grapes - Carignane, Grenache and Chenin - that were used willfully, then discarded, by the state's midcentury table-wine industry. And Trousseau, as Passalacqua might point out if you have a couple hours to kill in the Subaru, was an early arrival in the state, a key element in 19th century field blends.\nHence Passalacqua used the name \"Mataro\" for another wine, a Mourvedre blended from Del Barba and another site in Fiddletown (Amador County) - the old-time California name for that grape. It is part of what Pope calls \"that down-to-earth sensibility.\"\nThe back-to-the-future theme is repeated in the Sandlands labels, designed by Chuck House. House is one of the state's best-known label designers, responsible the look of familiar names like Frog's Leap and Turley. Passalacqua asked him for a look that might evoke the mythical California that might have existed if Prohibition's gash hadn't been so deep.\nThirst for visual clarity\nBut the sans serif design resembles some very real labels: those from Mayacamas Vineyards in the 1940s. The tidy, stark lines reflected a postwar thirst for visual clarity.\nOne wine not currently in the Sandlands roster: Zinfandel, which occupies Passalacqua at his day job. There is irony here because, in 2012, the Passalacquas bought their own vineyard, Kirschenmann, planted in 1915 on a sandy parcel in eastern Lodi. They sell their Zinfandel grapes to Turley and to such labels as Bedrock and Carlisle.\nBut Kirschenmann also contains newly grafted vines of Chenin Blanc, meant for a varietal bottling, plus three rows grafted to what might be called California heritage white grapes: Green Hungarian, Lignan Blanc and Grec Rouge - just enough for a single barrel of wine. Two additional tributes to the charms of sand.\nWhich returns us to the notion of Sandlands. Dirt, sure, but surely there's another common thread that connects Passalacqua's little vineyard anthology?\nHe thinks for a moment.\n\"For me, what it represents are mythical vineyards,\" he says. \"Vineyards that live on the fringe.\"\nGiven the limited production, Sandlands wines will be available by mailing list. E-mail: info@sandlandsvineyards.com.\n2010 Sandlands California Mataro ($25, 13.6% alcohol): As fragrant as Mourvedre gets - seductive rose petal, red currant, wild blueberry, and a surprisingly subtle leathery aspect.\n2011 Sandlands Amador County Chenin Blanc ($24, 12.9%): From the Story vineyard near Plymouth. Intensely mineral and tactile, full of dried apple, chive and a sweet vanilla bean spice.\n2012 Sandlands Sonoma Coast Trousseau ($28, 13.2%): Surprising tannin for this grape. A cured-meat aspect, moss, truffle and generous red fruit, like a beautiful compote. To be released in the fall.\nJon Bonné is The San Francisco Chronicle's wine editor. Find more of his coverage at www.sfgate.com/wine. E-mail: jbonne@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jbonne\nA foodie guide to Oakland Coliseum\nLatest recipes from the San Francisco Chronicle"