Santa Barbara: A Rare Bright Spot for California in 2020

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | AUGUST 25, 2022

Santa Barbara is one of the few bright spots for California in 2020. Tucked away to the south, far away from fires that were so damaging in the north, Santa Barbara was blessed with far more favorable conditions throughout the year, especially during the critical weeks around harvest. There were some challenges, most notably heat spikes in middle to late August and all of the stresses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but overall Santa Barbara fared much better than the rest of California. Based on what I have tasted and seen so far, Santa Barbara produced the finest wines in California in 2020 by a wide margin.

This graph, given to me by Andrew Murray, plots daily highs and lows for the 2019 and 2020 vintages at Murray’s Curtis Vineyard in Los Olivos in the critical period before and during harvest. Temperatures for 2020, plotted in blue, were consistently high during this period, as if the entire spectrum of temperatures had been transposed up.

I have been a big admirer of these wines for some time. The more than 800 wines I tasted for this report only reinforced that view. Best of all, Santa Barbara wines remain, inexplicably, largely undiscovered by both consumers and the wine trade. A quick look at prices for most of the wines in this article will undoubtedly come as a (positive) shock to readers given the massive price appreciation for wines from other regions around the world. Here’s one more tip: when dining out, look for Santa Barbara wines on restaurant lists – they often have the most gentle of markups.

Jill Russell presented the best wines I have ever tasted from Cambria.

The 2020 Growing Season & Wines

Whereas most of California experienced elevated temperatures and drought conditions throughout the growing season, 2020 was actually quite cool in Santa Barbara until a series of heat spikes starting in mid-August accelerated the final phase of ripening. Up until then, summer has been quite cool. The threat of mildew and rot led some winemakers to open canopies. Then everything changed in the middle of the month. Sustained periods of heat led to last minute irrigation and a condensed harvest, in many places, a sort of replay of 2017, although 2017 was warm the entire year, while 2020 was not. “Temperatures reached 114 degrees at my home ranch in Los Olivos. We have never seen anything like it,” Joey Tensley remarked, echoing comments I heard throughout the region. Ultimately there is a sort of randomness to the effect of freak events like sudden heat spikes because so much comes down to simply where vineyards are in their maturation cycle when heat arrives. Many, if not most, producers moved picking times ahead, where possible.

On a much more positive note, aside from one small, highly localized fire at the John Sebastiano vineyard, Santa Barbara was not impacted by the fires that were so devastating in Napa, Sonoma, the Santa Lucia Highlands and other regions. Smoke clouds at very high elevations darkened the skies, but there does not appear to have been any smoke influence on the grapes or wines. Even so, the stark reality is that smoke taint is not fully understood. Recognizing this, some winemakers were extremely prudent. “I destemmed all the Pinots out of an abundance of caution,” winemaker Trey Fletcher explained at Sanford Winery. However, that was not a universal choice. Many winemakers used stems as they would in most years.