Native9 winemakers James Ontiveros, Paul Wilkins

How could you pick out James Ontiveros during his college days?

"I was the guy coming to class filthy from working in my vineyard," he replies.

Ontiveros had decided to plant Pinot Noir on his family's ranch outside Santa Maria while a sophomore in college, but his roots on the Central Coast are as deep as they come. He's a ninth-generation Californian; his family received one of the early land grants, property that now houses such Santa Barbara County vineyards as Bien Nacido and Riverbench.

His family owned cattle, so Ontiveros signed up for animal science at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. But farming seemed like a better bet, so he switched to crop and fruit sciences.

But what to grow? The answer was staring him in the face. "From our ranch," he says, "you basically have a panoramic view looking out into all these famous vineyards."

Meantime, he met another fruit-science major. Paul Wilkins had come to Cal Poly to escape Tulare County, where his father farmed 300 acres of crops. Cal Poly didn't offer wine studies then, but both joined a small club which offered students the chance to visit nearby wineries.

"We were a very small group of wine geeks back in the day when being a wine geek wasn't really cool," Wilkins says.

Both started on their wine careers even before graduation. While developing his land, Ontiveros handled grower relations for Kendall-Jackson. Wilkins landed a 1996 internship as the second employee of John Alban, the Rhone pioneer in Edna Valley; soon Alban made him assistant winemaker.

Ontiveros graduated and moved north to do grower relations for Gallo. But after a family crisis in 2001 he moved back south, where his neighbors, the Miller family - owners of Bien Nacido - hired him as director of sales and marketing, which remains his day job.

By 2005, Wilkins was ready to move on from Alban and found consulting clients; soon his old college pal called, hoping Wilkins would make the Pinot from his 8-acre site - along with Alta Maria, a project using bought fruit.

Wilkins paid a visit. Ontiveros' vineyard, with its stressed, densely planted vines, made clear the two were of like minds about how to farm. Soon Ontiveros switched his strategy for planting, choosing samples of old California Pinot vines like Mt. Eden and Swan from the nearby Byron property.

"There's a saying: A fisherman can spot another fisherman," Ontiveros says.

Native9, now in its seventh vintage, remains a showcase, but the duo has grown fonder of the Alta Maria project, which harnesses Wilkins' cellar skills (he also has a Rhone-focused label, Autonom) and Ontiveros' local contacts from his work for Bien Nacido.

"I am not a value guy," Ontiveros says. "What makes me super proud after starting off saying, 'I'm not a value shopper' is saying, 'I can't think of a better $25 bottle of Pinot Noir in the world.' "

And this matchup has the talent to make it so.

E-mail Jon Bonné at jbonne@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page J - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle