Sine Qua Non

"Without which, nothing." In Latin, Sine Qua Non, means something essential.

Before Sine Qua Non took its operations to a vineyard up in the Santa Rita Hills, the man behind it all, Manfred Krankl, had set to work in a scruffy warehouse in a rundown suburb of Los Angeles: a low, multibay receiving warehouse made of bare concrete block, with telltale stenciling on its steel anticrime shutters, one of which read "sine qua non" with an ace-of-spades design. But what appears at a glance to be a midnight graffiti attack turns out on closer inspection to be something subtler, the paint set off by arrays of small, crosshatched scratches that lift the lettering and design into a sort of foreground. Welcome to the art of Manfred Krankl; it’s not as easy as it looks.

Manfred Karnkl, with his wife Elaine, founded Sine Qua Non in 1994, in California’s Santa Barbara regions, a milieu charged with excitement from the emerging “Rhône Ranger” scene. Beginning with several “project wines” made in partnership with friends at Ojai, Alban and Bien Nacido Vineyards, the initial production was approximately 100 cases. Krankl eventually found his sweet spot with a predominantly Syrah-blend he named "Queen of Spades" that earned a 95 from Robert Parker. Though he has occasionally strayed far afield–the Krankls have made a Pinot Noir for a time from Oregon grapes–Sine Qua Non’s reputation rests squarely on luscious, big-bodied Rhône-style red blends based on Syrah and Grenache.

These Syrahs–like all of Krankl’s wines–are unapologetically Californian, generally high in alcohol and made from very ripe fruit, but Krankl says, “I have never had a desire to make the biggest wine. There is no art to that.” What he wants instead is “a wine that is not purely intellectual, that has sex appeal to it, that is juicy and full-bodied but does have a certain liveliness and agility and grace, that isn’t a fruit bomb–I don’t know if that constitutes a philosophy.” He imagines his wines fitting in somewhere between the super-dense, color-saturated artisanal Shirazes of Australia and the layered, leaner reds of the northern Rhône Valley and Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

There are plenty of pleasant, one-note American Syrahs around, but Krankl at his best is among a handful of domestic winemakers to unlock the grape’s sophisticated extra dimensions: high aromatic notes, deeper bass notes, firm but graceful texture and a constellation of not always predictable flavors, ranging from suggestions of garigue, the perfumed underbrush of Provence, to blackberries, black pepper, licorice and wood smoke.

In addition to the beautiful tastes of his wines, what makes this story so fascinating is also the other details that add to the authenticity. First, the warehouse in a rundown suburb of Los Angeles where the Krankls first got to work. Then, even with rising fame and popularity, how they refused to expand production beyond the 3,500 cases that they could personally make. And finally, each Sine Qua Non bottle gets a completely new name and a new label design with its own often psychologically dark artwork.

Krankl claims to be bemused by his successes. He says it was all coincidental. He arrived in this country flat broke in the early 1980s, pursuing a woman he met while hitchhiking around Greece. By 1989, he was able to open the high-profile LA restaurant Campanile. The place thrived, but the real money-minter in the deal came about almost as an afterthought.

Campanile’s lease included an adjunct 1,100-square-foot space, which the owners decided to dedicate to a counter to sell the restaurant’s bread. Soon enough, the little outlet grew and grew, and by the time Krankl sold his shares in 2001, it had ballooned into a national enterprise with 500 employees. This was La Brea Bakery.

With the newfound financial resources, it was time to devote himself fully to Sine Qua Non, and the reputation of the wines have since continued to climb. During these twenty three years of existence, seven of Krankl’s wines have rung up a perfect 100 from Robert Parker (more than any Bordeaux first growth vineyards). And there is a six-year waiting list to get on the list to buy his Syrahs.

What are Sine Qua Non lovers and aspirants responding to? In Krankl’s opinion, he thinks "people pick up on a genuineness, both in the wine and in us, Elaine and me. Sometimes maybe we’re a little off in the way we present things. Probably if we hired a PR firm they could do a more elegant job, but I think people like knowing that this is made by real people with their own hands and own minds. We put our own hearts and souls into this.”