Winemaker Bob Cabral pulls his SUV up to the electronic gate at Calegari Vineyard on Eastside Road in Healdsburg. As he punches in the password for entry, around the bend comes owner Don Calegari himself in his 1956, orange and white Chevy Bel Air. Calegari gets out of the car to say hello, and Cabral says to his passenger, “I thought some of the growers were going to cry when I told them I was leaving. Don keeps asking me if I’ve changed my mind.”

No such luck. Cabral, winemaker at Williams Selyem Winery, will quit his post at the end of the 2014 harvest, his 17th with the winery and 34th in all. Calegari and the dozens of other farmers who sell their Pinot Noir grapes to the Healdsburg winery will feel the loss. Like families who, when their pediatrician retires, worry about who will take care of their babies, they’re concerned about what will happen when the new guy, Jeff Mangahas, takes over.

There is much at stake for wine drinkers, too. Since day one, Williams Selyem wines have been highly sought-after and acclaimed by critics. Their fans are legion and loyal. The Pinot Noirs are polished and precise, with floral aromas, vibrant berry and cherry flavors and silky textures. They’re so balanced that they stay strong in the cellar for up to 20 years; many top-notch U.S. restaurants have those older bottles on their wine lists. And the Pinots represent the distinctive personalities — the terroirs — of some of Sonoma’s and Mendocino’s finest vineyards, many of which became instantly famous when Williams Selyem put their names on its labels. Mangahas has a tough act to follow.

Yet Cabral, 53, survived similar scrutiny in 1998 when he replaced winery co-founder Burt Williams as winemaker. At the time, Williams and Ed Selyem were the rock stars of California Pinot Noir, their Russian River Valley wines so much in demand that only mailing-list members and select restaurateurs could buy them. Cabral, who was so enamored of Williams Selyem wines that he used part of his student loan to start buying them in the mid-1980s (he’s customer No. 576 on the 15,000-member list), not only had to fill Williams’ shoes but do so for a new owner, New Yorker John Dyson. With all that change, growers and consumers fretted over the future of their beloved Williams Selyem.

But Cabral — whose primary reasons for departing Williams Selyem are to shorten his 80-hour work weeks, spend more time with his family, and basically “change things up” — is certain the winery will be in capable hands with Mangahas. The two have worked side by side for three years, preparing for the day when the keys to the cellar would be relinquished.

“Will the wines change? God, I hope so,” Cabral said. “That’s what makes winemaking interesting. Jeff will make great wines, and he’ll be able to put his own spin on them, just as I did when I took over for Burt.”

“Spin” is an understatement.

Selyem and Williams began making wine in a Forestville garage in 1979 and went commercial in 1981. Working in a small winery on Westside Road southwest of Healdsburg, and without any vineyards of their own, they made wines that achieved “cult” status with critics, and thus consumers, and retired by selling to Dyson in 1998. Cabral inherited the rudimentary, way-too-small winery and over time developed a grand plan and a strategy for seeing it through. He leaves Williams Selyem a contented man.

The brand’s first owned vineyard, Drake Estate in Guerneville, was begun in 1998 when Cabral convinced Dyson to purchase an orchard whose apples had been used in Gerber baby food and plant it to grapes. In 2001, they acquired a sheep ranch farther south on Westside Road from the winery and planted it to Pinot Noir. A sleek, solar-powered winery followed in 2010, at what is now called Williams Selyem Estate.

Cabral made most of the viticulture and winery-design decisions, including keeping the original winery for crushing and pressing, which would keep the Burt-and-Ed tradition alive. He added more touches, such as planting 40 heritage fruit trees on the estate, for employees to harvest and enjoy.

“John (Dyson) wanted figs, but I wanted the fresh fruit I grew up eating in the San Joaquin Valley,” he said: peaches and nectarines, plums and pluots.

He brought in goats to chomp away at the poison oak that grows on the perimeter of the vineyard and planted a dizzying array of grapevine rootstocks and clones in an experimental block, which often yields distinctive, if very small-quantity, wines.

“Now it’s a ranch that has a winery on it,” Cabral said, “and not just a winery.”

Williams Selyem is best known for its 20 or so single-vineyard wines (including small-scale bottlings of Chardonnay and Zinfandel) from such prestigious vineyards as Bacigalupi, Coastlands, Hirsch, Olivet Lane, Precious Mountain, Rochioli and Burt Williams’ Morning Dew in Mendocino’s Anderson Valley. These growers have long lines of winemakers ready to buy their grapes, so Mangahas, like Cabral, will earn much of his salary by nurturing cordial relationships with farmers.

“It’s like a marriage. As you get more comfortable, the more time you spend with the vineyards and growers,” Cabral said. “That’s why I worked 80 hours a week. Luckily, I have a family that’s OK with that.”

His celebrity has taken him around the world to promote Williams Selyem and the Russian River Valley Winegrowers association. He’s hung out with rockers Sammy Hagar, Jonathan Cain of Journey and guitar god Jeff Beck, who had a rider in his contract that mandated that three bottles of Williams Selyem Pinot Noir be in his dressing room at all concerts.

Mangahas, 43, is positioned for similar stature. In addition to working with Cabral for three years, his experience includes winemaking stints at Russian River Valley Pinot Noir powerhouses Hartford Family Winery and Dutton-Goldfield.

“Bob took the principal elements of Burt’s winemaking and ran with them,” he said. “There were slight differences in decision-making from Burt to Bob, and there might be with me, but the style will be preserved. The spirit and soul of Williams Selyem will continue.”

Respecting the job he holds before he leaves it, Cabral is coy about what he will do after the 2014 harvest. He said he will someday create a wine brand with his wife, Heather, and daughter, Paige, 12, and perhaps consult for other wineries. He looks forward to having more time with Paige as she raises 4-H Club pigs, once his heavy travel schedule with Williams Selyem is over.

“I have other creative ideas on winemaking and grape growing that I’ll be better able to explore,” he said. “It’s time for a change. Time to seek new adventures.”

Burnt orange dust rises in tiny clouds as Paul Bernier walks through his Dry Creek Valley vineyard on a hot summer day.

The soil is the same shade of rust you might find in a baseball infield, unlike the earth in surrounding valleys. Dust settles between his toes as he walks in river sandals along the rows. It’s on his hands, because every so often he digs into the ground to reveal cool, moist dirt hidden beneath the 6-inch blanket of dust. Over the course of several hours, Bernier will dig into the ground with his bare hands at least three times to make the same point.

The dust is on his two Corgis, Wasabi and Finnegan, who follow him wherever he goes, and on his Dutcher Crossing cap, advertising a winery that buys his grapes every year. The dirt is even settled on the handkerchief tied around his neck to cover the hole in his throat — a constant reminder of his battle with laryngeal cancer.

“I’m not a pioneer when it comes to dry-farming,” Bernier said, stopping at the edge of a row, his low, raspy voice pausing so he can catch a breath. “I was lucky enough to learn from some old Italians who still farmed that way in the ’70s.”

Vines that aren’t irrigated by man typically produce small yields of tiny grapes with intense fruit flavor.

A passionately stubborn dry-farmer in an age of endless drip lines and over-irrigation, Bernier is the modern equivalent of a grape whisperer.

“They probably think I’m crazy,” he said, referring to growers who scoff at the idea of not watering the vines. “But I don’t care.”

Just imagine what they think in this record drought year, when many growers will spend thousands of extra dollars to douse their vines with more water than ever. It’s not like they can convert to dry-farming overnight: A vine used to being irrigated will wither in hot temperatures if the water supply is suddenly shut off. A vine farmed without added moisture is accustomed to the conditions and can usually handle the heat.

Travel abroad, and dry-farming vineyards is the norm. It is how most grapes are grown in Europe, where many countries mandate it by law. Looking back to Sonoma County in the 1950s and 1960s, it’s how nearly every vineyard was cultivated. That all changed in the 1970s, when Californians picked up the drip-line system from Israeli engineers, and drip irrigation took off on a massive scale.

Today, although farming wine grapes without irrigation is still unusual along the North Coast, Bernier is hardly alone. Frog’s Leap Winery in Rutherford dry-farms more than 200 acres. Kunde Family Estate dry-farms Chardonnay in Kenwood. Joe Battaglini of Battaglini Vineyards in the Russian River Valley never waters his 130-year-old Zinfandel vines. Will Bucklin dry-farms a 12-acre field blend in Sonoma Valley, first planted in 1852.

“One day, our kids are going to wake up and see that there’s no water anymore and say, ‘I guess we’ll have to dry-farm,’” Bucklin said.

He’s standing in the shade of his barn, wearing a dusty Yankees hat, his gruff beard as unruly as the tendrils sprouting in every direction from his old vines. Little Girl, his blue heeler mix, plops down in the shade beside him. His cat, Tanner, is never far away.

Nearby, his ancient vineyard block unfolds like a patchwork quilt, originally planted with more than 30 varieties, some that don’t even have names. One he simply calls “spotted grape.”

Taking over from his father-in-law, organic farming pioneer Otto Teller, Bucklin is devoted to irrigation-free farming, even though he’s sitting on a well that produces 80 gallons a minute of “crystal-clear, sought-after water.”

Across the region, irrigation varies from valley to valley, vineyard to vineyard, variety to variety. A 2012 study of 12 vineyards along the middle reach of the Russian River, conducted by irrigation consultant Mark Greenspan of Advanced Viticulture, found that the average dose of water was 42 gallons a vine a year and that “some irrigations were not necessary and/or were excessive.”

In Napa Valley, Frog’s Leap winemaker John Williams estimates that he saves a minimum of 16,000 gallons of water an acre with dry-farming, according to a report by the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, a nonprofit based in Davis. CAFF estimates that of the 500,000 acres of wine grapes grown in California, only about 2,000 are farmed without irrigation.

Duff Bevill of Healdsburg, a longtime vineyard manager who oversees 1,200 acres, estimates he dry-farms or “very rarely” waters about a third of those vineyards. He was inspired by the same “old Italian” (the late Jim Guadagni, the unofficial “mayor of Dry Creek”) who taught Bernier how to dry-farm in the 1970s.

“Irrigation is a tool I like to have,” Bevill said. “And when I see a need for it, I want to have that tool in my toolbox and be able to turn it on.”

He points to the heat wave of 2010 that “fried” the grapes as a perfect example of the need for emergency watering. And even the most dry-farmed of grapes will need water during the first year of growth.

To be clear, dry-farming is not suitable in many vineyards, according to Rhonda Smith, Sonoma County viticulture farm advisor with the UC Cooperative Extension. She points to factors including soil type (for water retention and depth of root development), varieties (Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are particularly thirsty) and rootstock. Old-vine Zinfandel is the most commonly dry-farmed grape, but there are others.

One of the biggest arguments against dry-farming is the lower yield. Typically, dry-farmed vines produce around 2 to 3 tons an acre, whereas irrigated vines yield 4 to 6 tons an acre.

Bernier said the average these days is about $2,500 a ton for Zinfandel and he gets approximately $3,200 “on our better vineyards.” Winemakers who treasure his grapes include Tim Bell at Dry Creek Vineyard, Jamie Peterson at Peterson Vineyards and Doug Nalle at Nalle Vineyards.

The payoff lies in the more concentrated clusters that do come to fruition with dry-farming, Bucklin said. “The size of the clusters is smaller and the size of the berries is smaller. And you have less juice-to-skin ratio, and so therefore more skin. And skin is where the flavor and color and tannin come from.”

In January and February, when seasonal Northern California downpours didn’t arrive and the days had an eerie, still sameness, Bucklin admitted that “I felt like the world was ending. That’s how grim I got.

“You feel helpless and you think you have to do something and yet you don’t. These vines have been doing this for 135 years. We always underestimate the plant’s ability to take care of itself.”

With moisture from rains in April and May still packed in the soil, his bushy, green, head-trained vines look as they do any other year as they grow toward harvest.

Likewise, Bernier has weathered the drought. Along with his 3 acres of Zinfandel and Petite Sirah, he sharecrops approximately 50 acres in Dry Creek Valley. On a hilly, 4.5-acre vineyard off Canyon Road, he squats down between rows and explains it like this: “The soil is charged, just like a battery is charged up. The later that the water hits the soil and you capture it, the more there is for the growing season.

“This year we got 16 inches of rain by April, so the soil was well-charged by the time we started cultivating, and it’s right here,” he said, digging about 8 inches deep to expose a darker-brown, packed, moist soil.

That soft dusty layer on top, the tediously cultivated dust mulch, helps seal the moisture in the soil. It’s the result of constant soil management and a much more demanding regimen of soil enrichment and amendments, rich cover crops and then composting, tilling and cultivating the soil to trap the moisture.

It’s what Bernier calls “feeding the ground.” He’ll come in right after harvest and compost before spreading tons of grape pomace (leftover seeds, skins and stems) and pulverized oyster shells between the rows. Later, he sows a cover crop of bell beans, peas, vetch, barley and oats that grows waist-high and naturally puts nitrogen in the soil. He chops it down in the spring and embarks on a religious regimen of discing, tilling and cultivating until the final result is 6 inches of a dusty mulch that seals in the moisture.

Dry-farmed vine roots have been known to spread out to 50 feet below the surface to seek moisture. Local lore has it that when Bella Vineyards dug its wine cave in Dry Creek Valley, old vine roots were poking through the ceiling, reaching down through the earth from 40 feet above.

So far, the hardy, drought-resistant St. George rootstock, developed in the 1800s to combat the vine-killing phylloxera root louse, has been the most widely dry-farmed. But UC Davis researcher Andy Walker is working to develop what some have hailed as the “cactus stock,” a rootstock that will need little to no water. He’s spent the past 25 years driving back roads in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, looking for wild-grape rootstocks that thrive in the desert.

It’s a glacially slow process, but Walker’s dream is that in about 10 years, he’ll have developed a rootstock that requires hardly any water.

Before that happens, what will it take, short of rivers and reservoirs drying up, for more grapegrowers to try dry-farming? Stubborn ones, according to Bernier, will have to face the fear of the unknown.

“You have to just want to do it,” he said. “It takes a leap of faith. For somebody who’s been hooked up to drip lines their whole life, they don’t understand.”

There’s no denying the bone-dry heat of summer in Sonoma, which extends into September and begins to temper in October. Hearty, savory foods begin to rejoin the menu, as do wines with similar personalities. Still, it’s good to have a few crisp whites on hand for those warm days when the colors of harvest shine most brightly.

Sauvignon Blanc for Back to School

If you like:

Black Stallion Estate 2013, Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc ($26)
From a posh Napa estate once owned by the director of the “Black Stallion” movie, this is a complex, textured white bursting with citrus notes and layers of creamy peach. Great with goat cheese, oysters and an array of hors d’oeuvres.

Then try:

Josh Cellars 2012 Sonoma County, Sauvignon Blanc ($13)
Josh wines always provide good value and this Sauvignon Blanc is no exception. Crisp and juicy, it’s an easy bottle to unscrew and pour for friends, with tropical fruit flavors, a creamy mid-palate and enough herbal underpinnings to keep it interesting.

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Pinot Noir for Fall Foliage

If you like:

Walt 2012 Savoy Vineyards, Anderson Valley Pinot Noir ($65)
Anderson Valley takes on beautiful new colors as the vines are harvested and green leaves turn to yellow, purple and red. This wine is a seductive way to mark fall, with brambly blackberry fruit, spicy oak and a creamy milk chocolate sensation on the finish.

Then try:

MacMurray Ranch 2012, Russian River Valley Pinot Noir ($28)
This wine tastes way beyond its price: tangy, smooth and with juicy black cherry, cola and spice. The ranch isn’t open to the public, but the drive there from Healdsburg or River Road is gorgeous and there are many tasting rooms along the way.

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Cabernet Sauvignon for Columbus Day

If you like:

Rocca Family 2010 Collinetta Vineyard Coombsville Napa Valley, Cabernet Sauvignon ($95)
A complex wine from the cooler climes of Napa, it’s ageworthy and offers heady violet aromatics, black, brambly fruit, and spicy oak. If you’re going to drink it soon, decant it to allow oxygen to open it up. Or put it in the cellar for up to a decade.

Then try:

Jordan Vineyard & Winery 2010, Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($53)
Steady Jordan sticks to its roots, crafting vintage after vintage of elegant, food-friendly Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. This Cab from a relatively cool vintage exudes crisp cassis character, smooth tannins, and plenty of acidity to keep it buoyant through a meal of Sonoma lamb or duck confit.

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Red Blends for Halloween

If you like:

St. Francis Winery 2011 Rockpile, Red Sonoma County ($50)
From high-elevation-grown grapes, Rockpile Red melds Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, Merlot and Malbec to spectacular effect. There is plenty of dark chocolate — trick or treat for grown-ups — with black cherry, currant and clove character. Supple tannins seal the deal.

Then try:

Buena Vista Winery 2012 The Count Founder’s, Red Wine Sonoma County ($20)
Zinfandel, Syrah, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petite Sirah and Carignane comprise this blend that’s as brooding and mysterious as its namesake, Agoston Haraszthy, who founded Buena Vista in 1857. Red berry fruit is accented by whispers of cinnamon and vanilla.