(published in the Santa Barbara News-Press on July 8, 2012)
Youth has
always been synonymous with Santa Barbara wine country. It is, after all, one of the newest wine
grape growing regions in the state, with experimental plantings beginning in
the late 1960s and significant winemaking in effect for the last 35 years
ago. Comparable ventures in places like
Napa and Sonoma have been underway for at least three times as long.
Pioneers
still make headlines here, with recognizable names like Sanford, Longoria,
Brown, Brander and Lindquist. Their
wines still draw accolades. And their
tasting rooms still draw crowds.
But there’s
a fresh energy budding in Santa Barbara’s vineyards. A new wave of talent is taking root. They are younger winemakers – some women,
mostly men – who are tipping their hats to their predecessors but who are also
staking a territory all their own. They
are focusing on innovation – new techniques, new growing regions, new grape
varieties – while embracing a tradition some 35 years in the making. Here’s a look at 10 of them – all age of 35
and under – whose wines, and whose vision for the future of Santa Barbara
winemaking, are quickly creating a buzz.
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| Drake Whitcraft |
Name
recognition has helped Drake Whitcraft gets his start; his father, Chris
Whitcraft, after all, remains one of the most treasured names in local
winemaking, with some of his first stellar chardonnays dating back to the late
70s. But the Whitcraft label’s recent
triumphs – the younger Whitcraft has been producing the entire portfolio since
2008 – have to do with a knack all his own.
At 30 now, Whitcraft admits that entering the winemaking scene happened
“a lot sooner” than he expected; he plunged into the family business when a
series of health crises forced his dad to pull way back. But he’d always known he’d be making wine –
he started helping in the winery at age 11 – and what he brings to the table is
a fresh new focus for a longstanding brand.
A wider variety of reds are in Whitcraft’s future – syrah, grenache,
nebbiolo – and leaner production numbers.
But the famous
Whitcraft spotlight on pinot noir is not going anywhere, thanks in part to more
high-end fruit sources coming online.
“When my dad was around, there were three or four good vineyards, and
now there are so many more,” Whitcraft says.
“Pinot is the most terroir-driven wine there is and they all taste
totally different here.”
He credits
his father with instilling an uncompromising focus on hands-off winemaking, and
winemakers like Rick Longoria and Foxen’s Bill Wathen for showing him the
“right kind of camaraderie” among winemakers.
The
Whitcraft tasting room is located at 36 S. Calle Cesar Chavez in downtown Santa
Barbara. www.whitcraftwinery.com.
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| Tessa Marie Parker |
Name
recognition won’t hurt Tessa Marie Parker, either. Her grandfather, Fess Parker, gained fame on
myriad fronts – from film to wine – and her father, Eli Parker, has long garnered
accolades for his Epiphany label. So Ms.
Parker admits her foray into making wine was “a natural evolution.”
But her
label, Tessa Marie Wines, is gaining singular attention for wines that are very
personal to the winemaker. “I’m a true
California girl so I like my Cal-Italian wines, and sangiovese is my love” she
says. Ms. Parker bottles a sangiovese
and a blend dubbed Coquette that features a sangiovese-syrah blend. She’s also one of the very few local
winemakers producing a vermentino. “My
pride and joy,” she calls it.
The young
vintner worked her first harvest at age 17, launched her label in 2005 and
opened her Los Olivos tasting room – at 2901 Grand Ave. – two years ago.
She’s aware
women are outnumbered in the local winemaking scene, but undaunted. “It’s a man’s world, but we’ve got a softer
touch and bring something different to the table to spice things up.” Her attention, instead, is on the future.
“This area
allows young people to get a start,” she says.
“I even see it in some of the high schools, where students can tend
their own grapevines. You can catch the
bug and learn to do things a little bit differently than everyone else.” www.tessamariewines.com.
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| Gavin Chanin |
Gavin Chanin
was at the right place, at the right time, when he took a summer job between
high school and UCLA. He got a volunteer
gig at Au Bon Climat and Qupe, and learned the ropes from winemaking legends
Jim Clendenen and Bob Lindquist. “When
I was doing the drive up from L.A., I didn’t have it in mind to be a winemaker,
it was just a fun summer job,” he recalls.
“But two weeks in, I realized I was in a special place and I fell in
love with the work.”
Chanin has
quickly become one of the more buzzed-about winemakers in the county. Just last year, for example, Forbes put him
on their “30 Under 30” list of names in the U.S. culinary industry to
watch. “The goal was never to get a bunch
of press,” he insists. “It just happened
as a result of hard work in the vineyards and the cellar.”
The work has
a clear focus: pinot noir and chardonnay only, “and wines with balance and
elegance,” he says. In fact, “pinot is
the ultimate grape through which to manifest a vineyard,” he declares, and believes
there are many prime sites for growing it even in Santa Barbara County that are
yet undiscovered.
Chanin Wines
launched in 2007, when its namesake vintner was just 21 and had just returned
from wine immersion trips to South Africa, New Zealand and Europe. The wines – Chanin produces 1000 cases
annually – are made in a new facility built on Bien Nacido Vineyard in Santa
Maria. Chanin also launched a partnership with well-known investor Bill Price;
their label is yet unnamed, but “the impetus are the vineyards we source,” he
insists, “not the brand.” www.chaninwine.com.
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| Trey Fletcher |
Trey
Fletcher has only lived in Santa Barbara County for a year, but he marvels at
the “tremendous amount of camaraderie” that exists among local winemakers. “There is competition, but not without mutual
respect,” he says. “And we’re all
freaks,” he adds with a laugh, “completely obsessed.”
Fletcher’s
burgeoning career has taken him to the vineyards of Argentina, Switzerland and
New Zealand. Last year, he left the
cellars at Littorai in Sonoma – a premier producer of pinot noir and chardonnay
in the world – to make wine under the personal labels for Bien Nacido and
Solomon Hills. The names have long been
coveted grape sources for winemakers locally and across the country. Now, the Miller family of Santa Barbara, which
owns both vineyards, earmarks acreage on each for their own private labels.
Fletcher
considers the chance to work with such famous fruit, “humbling and
exciting.” The combined annual
production is 1000 cases: chardonnay and pinot from each property, as well as
syrah and grenache from Bien Nacido. The
2011 vintage is in barrel now; the 2010 chardonnays and 2009 pinots and syrah
will be debuted this fall.
Fletcher
strives for “wines that are true to the vineyards” and a style that is
“terroir-focused.” And he believes in a
minimalist winemaking approach. “It’s
having the guts to fly into the black hole, for sure,” he says, “but it’s not really
a gamble if you have good farming practices.”
www.biennacidovineyards.com.
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| Ernst Storm |
Storm
studied winemaking and worked two vineyards in his native South Africa before
moving to California in 2003. “I wanted
to explore wine in the Northern Hemisphere,” he recalls. He made wine in Northern California before
the Firestone family hired him in 2005.
Storm admits
he’s drawn the cooler grape growing climates; his native country and Santa
Barbara share similarities in that respect.
“But the soils here are different,” says Storm, “and there are many
microclimates within the one large area.”
In fact, Storm predicts the next few years will see several appellations
break out from within the Santa Ynez Valley and even the Santa Rita Hills.
When the
Firestones sold the Firestone wine label in 2008, Storm took over winemaking
duties at the Firestones’ Curtis label, under the tutelage of Chuck
Carlsson. He works simultaneously on his
own eponymous label – Storm Wines – which dates back to 2006 and allows Storm
to “really go extreme with my philosophy, making wines that are unmanipulated, with
lower alcohols, that have personality of vintage and site, and that are
food-friendly and balanced.” His annual
production, with a focus on pinot noir and an increasingly sought-after
sauvignon blanc, is 500 cases.
Storm admits
he, and other younger winemakers, are “pushing the envelope” of
winemaking. And “it’s nice to see,” he
says, “that a lot of the region’s pioneers are embracing us.” www.stormwines.com.
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| Graham Tatomer |
When he was
16, a summer job at Santa Barbara Winery was just a way to make money for
Graham Tatomer. “It was my first
paycheck!” he recalls. But a
post-graduation full-time job under then-assistant winemaker Greg Brewer got
him hooked.
Today,
Tatomer oversees production of all of Brewer’s celebrated labels: Melville,
Brewer-Clifton and Diatom. But his spare
time is dedicated to his own namesake label – Tatomer – which is quickly
winning praise for a focus very much unique to Santa Barbara: dry riesling.
Tatomer’s
passion for Alsatian wines comes from several vineyard stints in Austria. Between 2003 and 2008, he traveled back and
forth several times between Santa Barbara County (where he’d land periodic
stints with winemaking phenom Adam Tolmach) and the Danube-adjacent Wachau
valley. By 2008, the decision to settle locally
rather than oversees was driven by the discovery of Kick On Ranch, a cool
climate vineyard near Vandenberg Air Force Base. The 2010 release of his ’08 vintage riesling
garnered immediate media acclaim.
This year,
Tatomer is working on six Austrian-inspired wines – four rieslings and two
gruner veltliners. Niche varietals that
aren’t always an easy sell; in fact, Tatomer lightheartedly dubs them “the last
of the true, noble, high echelon varieties that no one is taking seriously in
America.” But his prediction is that
Santa Barbara County will grow them in more and more “appropriate places” in
the years to come. www.tatomerwines.com.
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| Ryan Carr |
Today, Ryan
Carr manages 15 vineyards – more than 100 acres of premium grapes throughout
Santa Barbara County. He got into the
business when he was 22. And back then,
“I didn’t expect it to turn into winemaking for me,” he admits.
But Carr has
quickly become one of the most buzzed-about winemakers in the area, with a
portfolio that includes award-wining pinot noir, cabernet franc and syrah. He runs two tasting rooms, one in downtown
Santa Barbara and a newly-opened storefront in downtown Santa Ynez.
His first
commercial vintage was in 2000 and what drew him to making wine, not just
growing grapes, was “Santa Barbara, itself,” he says, “and the uniqueness of
the area. We have so many great
microclimates that we can grow many varietals well, and I get to work with so
many different locations, it makes it fun.”
Carr
acknowledges the inspiration of older counterparts, like Chris Whitcraft, Craig
Jaffurs and Daniel Gehrs. And while he
admits winemaking has become much more competitive, Santa Barbara still offers
nascent winemakers “an opportunity to get involved.”
In fact, he
sees the area’s future hinging less on availability of talent and more on
climate change. “The last three years,
the weather has been a constant challenge,” he says, “and if things warm up, we
may have to rethink the varietals we plant.”
www.carrwinery.com.
 |
| Justin Willett |
Justin
Willett’s foray into wine involved “buying some pretty inexpensive bottles with
my roommates in I.V.,” recalls the UCSB grad.
But stints as a bartender in Santa Barbara and, mainly, high-end
restaurants in L.A. introduced him to wines that would eventually serve as
inspiration. And today, Willett is
quickly gaining high acclaim for his own red and white creations.
The
self-declared “local boy” made his first wines in 2005 – just 190 cases – while
he was assistant winemaker at Arcadian, under Joe Davis. Today, Willett makes wine for several clients
– all in his own Lompoc facility – to the tune of some 2000 cases a year. His own label is dubbed Tyler (that’s his
middle name).
Pinot noir
and chardonnay have been his claim to fame thus far. For Tyler, his sources grapes from top-tier
local wineries, like Clos Pepe and Dierberg.
He’s also launching the estate program for the renowned La Encantada
Vineyard (planted in 2000 by Richard Sanford) this year. And joint ventures with several renowned
sommeliers from San Francisco to New York City have him branching out to other varieties,
like chenin blanc and cabernet franc.
There’s no
mistaking Willett’s philosophy: “It’s about properly conveying places through
wine, and moving away from too much oak or ripeness or extraction,” he
says. And he says he’s in the perfect
place to do just that.
“Santa
Barbara has the most potential than any region in California,” he
declares. “There’s an aromatic profile
here, and a freshness and a minerality that simply does not exist anywhere
else.” www.tylerwinery.com.
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| Dave Potter |
It’s
impossible to overlook the quirky labels on Dave Potter’s wine labels. “I take the craft seriously, but I also have
fun with presentation,” says the man behind Municipal Winemakers, whose Funk
Zone tasting room (as 22 Anacapa St.) has easily become one of the hippest
spots to buy and sip wine in downtown Santa Barbara. The facility is open until 11pm some nights.
Potter’s produces
his own label, which he launched in 2007, while maintaining duties as assistant
winemaker at Fess Parker Winery. It’s
inspired by Potter’s adventures in France and Australia, where he earned his
enology degree. “My style has a
French-Aussie vibe,” he says.
He makes
celebrated blends, works with “odd ball, big Rhones” like cinsault and counoise
and loves making riesling (he makes two).
He sees riesling as a grape to watch, but admits its future locally may hinge
on economics. “It’s very site specific,
and the Santa Rita Hills is a great place for it,” he says. “But if you can get $20 for a bottle of
riesling or $35 for pinot, what would you plant?”
He touts the
area’s grape diversity but admits variety can also make branding a clear
identity a challenge. “As a producer,
though, it’s a lot of fun,” he admits.
And he likes working alongside older counterparts. “The founding fathers of the area are still
making wine,” he says. “You can’t find that
in any other region as recognized as Santa Barbara.”
Potter’s
yearly production is about 1200 cases, all sold direct through the tasting
room. www.municipalwinemakers.com.
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| Chase, Brooke and Mike Carhartt |
What Chase
Carhartt lacks in experience, he makes up with unbridled enthusiasm.
Carhartt was
just seven years old when his parents, Brooke and Mike, planted their Santa
Ynez Valley vineyard. Early on in the
family business, “I did things like punch downs and helped where I could,” he
recalls. “But all the pieces didn’t come
together until I took it seriously in school.”
Carhartt graduated just last month from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a
bachelor’s in agriculture with a sub-concentration in enology; he also
completed a harvest internship in South Africa.
So now, the
future is wide open for Carhartt, who plans on collaborating with his mother,
the Carhartt label’s winemaker, and known for stellar estate sauvignon blanc,
syrah and merlot. He likes that his
family sells all their wine direct to consumer through their Los Olivos tasting
room, at 2990 Grand Ave. “It’s taking
wine sales back to its roots,” he says.
And he’s already spending several days of the week there, engaging
visitors and selling wine.
Carhartt’s
biggest asset right now may be his fresh approach. “The wine industry has to humble itself and
focus on promoting comfortability,” he asserts.
And he touts the region’s wide range of growing conditions. “What’s cool is that we don’t have to
outsource,” he says.
But there’s
no escaping the call of his young age.
With a laugh, he admits, “I want to work but I still do want to travel
and find other ways to express my youth!’
He’ll be working harvest in France this fall. www.carharttvineyard.com.
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