SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS, Calif. – One of the differences between big California money and big East Coast money is that Californians seek agrarian bliss. They buy ranches and, especially, vineyard land. Of course they’ve got their big house (or three), but the pull of place is strong in California.You’ve got to get rooted, literally.

That’s certainly one of the impulses behind the newborn Rhys Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains that arch above the Santa Clara Valley, aka Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco on what everyone calls “the Peninsula.”

Rhys Vineyards (pronounced “reece”) is the passion and money pit of Kevin Harvey, a 40-something Silicon Valley software entrepreneur and now venture capitalist. “It all began as recently as six years ago,” said Mr. Harvey, who admits that his pursuit of great Santa Cruz Mountains chardonnay and pinot noir borders on obsession.”Once I start something, I guess I become totally enraptured,” he said. “My wife likes wine, but she’s, well, not quite so nuts,” he laughed.

The California wine rapture is hardly a new phenomenon. It first began more than a century ago, when big San Francisco money showed off its wealth in the now-traditional California fashion: by buying vineyard land in Napa Valley and building show-off wineries in the 1880s such as Beringer and Inglenook, among many others.

Wine-growing in the Santa Cruz Mountains is equally venerable, although the scale was and is different.Then and now these coastal mountains (the Pacific Ocean is always less than 10 miles away as the seagull flies) are surprisingly rugged, wild, and remote.The difference between the valley floor, encrusted with sleek Silicon Valley campuses housing the likes of Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and Apple, and the untouched, above-it-all Santa Cruz Mountains is extreme to a degree best described as shocking.

As we drove along the breathtaking ridgeline road called Skyline Boulevard, upwards of 1,500 feet above the valley floor, we saw unfenced, pristine open space as far as the eye could see. “It’s all owned by the Peninsula Open Space Trust,” Mr. Harvey explained. “They even have the right of eminent domain, although I don’t think they’ve ever used it.”

The Peninsula Open Space Trust, founded in 1977, owns 55,000 acres of land in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, an area 12 times the size of Yosemite Valley. Given the extraordinary cost of housing in the peninsula, the sight of so much untouched open land is almost surreal.

Rhys Vineyards plantings, however, are not only legal but are even encouraged.As we visited Mr. Harvey’s four vineyards – Family Farm Vineyard (6.2 acres at 400 feet elevation),Alpine Road Vineyard (13 acres at 1,200 to 1,500 feet elevation), Skyline Vineyard (3.5 acres at 2,300 feet elevation), and Horseshoe Ranch Vineyard (17.5 acres at 1,300 to 1,600 feet elevation) – I mentioned the protracted land use battles now common in Napa and Sonoma counties, especially for hillside sites.

“I didn’t have any problems at all,” Mr. Harvey replied. “Everything sailed right through. It’s all zoned agricultural, and since we did virtually no grading, we needed no additional permits.”

Nevertheless, vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains are rare. It has long been one of the most profound locations anywhere in California, proved today by such stellar producers as Ridge Vineyards (whose Monte Bello cabernet sauvignon is routinely cited as one of California’s greatest) and Mount Eden Vineyards (whose estate chardonnay is many tasters’ choice for California’s single best chardonnay).

Yet only the most impassioned venture in. According to the Viticulture Association of the Santa Cruz Mountains, little more than 1,100 acres of vines are planted in these hills. (Napa Valley has 30 times as much.) Most of the vineyards are tiny; only 14 vineyards exceed 20 acres.

The reason is simple, if painful, economics. Not only is land expensive, but the deal-killer is low yields. No one in the Santa Cruz Mountains gets much more than 2 tons of grapes to the acre. Many get only half that. In comparison, a low yield in Napa Valley is 4 tons to the acre, with greedier growers getting more. In wine economics, yield is everything,as all your other costs (land,irrigation, sprays, labor) are largely fixed.

Mr. Harvey’s passion, like so many others in this determinedly idiosyncratic zone, is pinot noir. “I dream about pinot noir,” he said. And he tastes them constantly, comparing California pinot noirs in numerous, extensive tastings with red Burgundies, which are 100% pinot noir.

His vineyards are models of the most advanced vineyard thinking in California today. Mr. Harvey has planted nearly two dozen clones, or strains, of pinot noir in his four vineyards, many of which are very closely spaced, which means many more vines per acre than usual.

The vines are cultivated along biodynamic lines, a form of ultra-orthodox organic cultivation, although Mr. Harvey pointed out that he has not applied for biodynamic certification from Demeter, an organization created for that purpose.

Although creating great pinot noir is his goal, Mr. Harvey also planted chardonnay and a small amount of syrah. “Actually, I don’t think we planted enough chardonnay,” he said. “People who have tasted our first chardonnay have really loved it, and we probably should have more to offer.”

He’s right. Rhys Vineyard Chardonnay 2003 (never released commercially) is exceptional wine: dense, suffused with a minerality that a traditionalist would call Burgundian, and blessedly devoid of the excessive oakiness that mars several other Santa Cruz Mountains-grown chardonnays. A not-yet-released 2004 bottling is equally rewarding.

Rhys Vineyards’ first pinot noirs are still in the barrel. And a good portion of the vines are not yet even bearing. (It takes three years for a vine to first bear fruit.) The pinot noirs tasted from the barrel, all from the 2004 vintage, are more than merely promising. They are characterful, with a resonant smack of the earth and typical of other Santa Cruz Mountains pinot noirs in their sizable scale and likely longevity. (Wines from these mountains are among California’s most age-worthy.)

Other wines – pinot noir and syrah – are offered from fruit purchased elsewhere and sold under the Alesia label. This practice is universal in the Santa Cruz Mountains as nobody can really make a living from vines offering such meager yields. So they buy fruit (or wine) from elsewhere.

The Alesia bottlings are very fine, especially the syrahs, which are nothing less than extraordinary.

Rhys Vineyard is, obviously, still in its infancy. But it has the potential of becoming one of California’s most compelling estates, given the location of its vineyards and the sure and rigorous palate of its owner. That’s an unbeatable combination for wine greatness anywhere in the world.