Santa Barbara: On the Road, Continued...

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | SEPTEMBER 9, 2016

My annual trip to Santa Barbara was more jam-packed than usual. The number of producers making compelling wines continues to grow, which is great news for the consumer. Most of the wines I tasted were from 2014, a year in which Chardonnay seems to have done particularly well. I continue to believe Santa Barbara is one of California’s best-kept secrets. The region’s rich viticultural and winemaking culture offers much to discover. 

A Brief Introduction

One of the questions I am most often asked is what attracts me most to Santa Barbara County. As I have written here before, the reasons are many. Santa Barbara’s rich historical fabric, multi-cultural melting pot of ethnicities and diversity of terroirs, microclimates and styles of wine open so many paths for the curious wine lover to explore. For more on those topics, as well as an in-depth look at the various regions, or AVAs, within Santa Barbara County, I refer readers to last year’s article. As of that writing, the Los Olivos District has been approved as an AVA, while the boundaries of the Sta. Rita Hills AVA have recently been expanded. On a personal level, I find Santa Barbara an incredibly fascinating region to spend time in. 

John Sebastiano Vineyard, Sta. Rita Hills

On the Sta. Rita Hills

Although much was made of the expansion of the Sta. Rita Hills AVA, it is, in my view, a non-story. The Sta. Rita Hills has done a tremendous job of marketing itself as a cool-climate AVA. But do the wines really taste like cool-climate wines? By that, I mean are the wines vibrant, tense and energetic, as most consumers would expect in cooler climates? The answer, at least in my mind, is No. There are many reasons for this, including clonal selection, a preference for de-leafing and picking at higher sugars, all of which mitigate the cooling influences of the nearby Pacific Ocean. In addition, the appellation itself is quite varied. A brief look at the map below shows at least four separate micro-regions. The first, the vineyards along Highway 246, is centered around Zotovich, Babcock, Melville and Clos Pepe, where many sites are rich in sand and yield delicate, often lifted wines. The hillside vineyards that form the Mt. Carmel/Rita’s Crown/Sea Smoke district often produce much more phenolic, intense, tannic wines except in some cases where the natural personality of the sites is dominated by different stylistic choices. Looking down from Mt. Carmel towards Sanford & Benedict reveals yet another cluster of vineyards – sites that tend to produce ripe, supple wines. Lastly, the vineyards towards the far west of the appellation, including Rancho Salsipuedes (and its vineyards Puerta del Mar, Bentrock and Radian) and La Côte, are cold, truly marginal sites. Even in the peak of summer, on a cloudy day the temperatures can be shocking cold. And that is just a cursory overview, as there are plenty of vineyards, some of them of exceptional pedigree, that fall outside of these clusters.

For appellations to truly make sense, the wines from a place have to have some thing or things in common. I don’t really see that in the Sta. Rita Hills, which is why expanding the AVA does not strike me as particularly meaningful or important. What I would like to see is more discussion of the various districts within the Sta. Rita Hills and their unique attributes.