Beckmen Vineyards

The Free Bacchus Story

Tom Beckmen built his career in the electronic music business, where he founded Roland Corporation US. His son Steve pushed the family winery toward the grapes of France’s Rhône Valley, and the family has been tending vines in the Santa Ynez Valley, north of Santa Barbara, since 1994.

The vineyard that matters most is Purisima Mountain, 125 acres in Ballard Canyon that climb 500 feet up the southwest slope of a mountain. Under it is limestone, rare on California’s Central Coast, and the family compares it to the soils of Champagne, Burgundy and the southern Rhône. Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre and Counoise all grow there, and Syrah has become the flagship. Syrah makes a dark red that often smells of pepper.

Steve Beckmen first saw biodynamic farming in the early 1990s, on a friend’s backyard farm in the Bay Area, and doubted it could work on commercial vineyards. Then, at a yearly Central Coast festival for Rhône wines, he got to know Philippe Armenier, a Châteauneuf-du-Pape producer who consulted on biodynamics, and hired him. In 2002 they tried it on one young block of Syrah, Block Six. The 2003 wine from that block convinced them. By 2004 forty acres were farmed biodynamically, the rest of the vineyard followed over two more years, and it was first certified in 2008.

Demeter certifies Beckmen’s farming. The family says Purisima Mountain was the first biodynamically farmed vineyard in Santa Barbara County, and it avoids herbicides, pesticides and nitrogen fertiliser. The certificate stops at the vineyard: Demeter lists Beckmen as a grower, not a winery, so the wine itself is not certified biodynamic, and Beckmen holds no USDA organic certificate.