A local wine authority, Bruce Nichols, of The Wine Store in Naples, focuses on bottles from boutique vintners (which produce less than 50,000 cases annually and tend to run out of small, family farms); makers emphasizing craftsmanship over quantity. With more than 40 years in the industry, Bruce has access to the best of the wine world. As a longtime vintner liaison to the Naples Winter Wine Festival, he collaborates with the festival’s wine committee, leveraging his industry contacts to cull top vintners who meet the festival’s notoriously high standards.
Suffice it to say, this man knows his stuff. And, though his brick-and-mortar shuttered after flooding from Hurricane Ian, The Wine Store lives on as a thriving online retailer. Bruce still also builds private wine collections and recommends valuable acquisitions for high-net-worth clients seeking sought-after vintages.
Photography by Brian Tietz
Local wine sage Bruce Nichols
Local wine sage Bruce Nichols prizes Santa Barbara’s Au Bon Climat for the winery’s dedication to small-batch craftsmanship and sense of place. The 2021 Chardonnay Sanford & Benedict Vineyard draws from some of the oldest vineyards planted in the Central Coast.
One boutique wine he recommends to discerning oenophiles: the 2021 Au Bon Climat Sanford & Benedict Chardonnay— a part of the winery’s Historic Vineyard Collection—bottles sourced from iconic Central Coast vineyards responsible for elevating the region’s chardonnay and pinot noir reputation.
At the beginning of his career, in the mid-1970s, Bruce heard about a nascent movement bubbling in California. Back then, there were fewer than 20 wineries dotting Napa Valley and nothing much happening in the rest of the state. Within a decade, visionary vintner Jim Clendenen would change the landscape, with his Santa Barbara winery Au Bon Climat. In college, Jim had spent a semester abroad in France and fell in love with Burgundian wines and their rooted-in-place flavors. He believed Santa Barbara’s location—on a coastal plain with the Santa Ynez mountains running east to west, creating a buffer and distinct Mediterranean-like climate—would be ideal for crafting similar vintages. He founded Au Bon Climat in 1982, becoming part of the first wave of winemakers to put the Santa Barbara region on the global wine map.
The winery sources fruit from some of California’s oldest vineyards. The favored chardonnay is produced from Sanford & Benedict’s vines, among the first to be planted in the region in 1971. Located in the Santa Ynez Valley’s Sta. Rita Hills appellation, the vines’ maturity and location in a valley, where cool mountain and ocean fogs converge and linger, allow grapes to ripen gradually, with a distinctly Burgundian profile. The soil—a sandy loam with traces of shale—matches Burgundy’s ripe terroir. You would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the Sanford & Benedict Chardonnay and something from the grape’s motherland.
Courtesy Au Bon Climat
Courtesy Au Bon Climat
Courtesy Au Bon Climat
Courtesy Au Bon Climat
In 2010, a chance encounter in France’s Pouilly-Fuissé region with Jim—whom Bruce had met at a family event while living in California in the ’70s—reignited his affection for Loire Valley and Burgundian wines. The men coincided at Domaine Didier Dagueneau, where they sampled varietals, each moved by the wine’s marked dedication to its area of origin. These are wines that want to impart more than flavor, reaching always toward a sense of place. Jim imbued his label with the same philosophy, valuing small-production craftsmanship and respecting the land’s integrity. “When you talk Burgundy, there are only two grapes (pinot noir and chardonnay)—and Jim was certainly the master,” Bruce says.
After Jim’s passing in 2021, his children, Isabelle and Knox, took charge and remain committed to honoring their father’s legacy. Part of the few wineries with vintages dating back four decades, Au Bon Climat stands apart from the rest. “The fruit that comes in has this excellent minerality,” she says, adding that saltiness is often not considered important in wine but adds complexity. “That is why my dad liked it.” The salinity shines through in the 2021 Au Bon Climat Sanford & Benedict Chardonnay, a bottle reflecting the winery’s fidelity to low-alcohol, high-acidity wines designed to mature gracefully over a decade or longer.
On the nose, fresh aromatics of lemon zest and green apple lift the 2021 vintage; on the palate, it reveals a medley of citrus, tart royal jelly, subtly intertwined with walnut and oak accents. The vineyard’s signature crushed rock minerality weaves throughout, adding bright acidity and a vibrant, clean finish. “If you can get your hands on some, put a few bottles away for a few years,” Bruce says. This is one of those wines that truly gets better with time.
Courtesy Au Bon Climat
Bien Nacido Vineyard Foggy Hilltop
Jim saw the region’s location—on a coastal plain, guarded by the Santa Ynez mountains and with cool fogs that linger—as ideal for creating Burgundian-style wines. “The fruit that comes in has this excellent minerality—that is why my dad liked it,” Isabelle says.