By Teresa Mariani

Just 25 years ago, you’d have been hard pressed to find a vineyard in Santa Barbara County. Oh sure, finding cows was easy. But wine grapes? That was another story.

Then a U.C. Davis study detailed how the Santa Ynez Valley, nearby Foxen Canyon and rolling hills just west and southwest of Santa Maria - a short 40-mile jaunt south of San Luis Obispo and Avila Beach - were potentially prime grape growing regions. It wasn’t exactly news to local families who had carefully tended 100- and 75-year-old historic vineyards like Rancho Sisquoc all along.

Now, Santa Barbara County Wines are increasingly in the spotlight, across the state, the nation and the globe. Wine is a $100 million a year business in Santa Barbara County. And when you’re talking Santa Barbara County Wines, you’re really talking Santa Ynez and Santa Maria wines.

Thanks to the study and the pioneers who paid attention to it, vineyard acreage grew to 8,000 acres in the picturesque Santa Ynez Valley, Santa Maria Valley and nearby Foxen Canyon between 1975 and 1995.

During those 20 years, the area became recognized as one of the four great viticultural areas in California when it comes to growing Pinot Noir, a notoriously difficult grape. Winemakers are proud to boast that their vineyards are part of the Santa Maria Valley region - and wine drinkers are looking for the area name on wine labels.

“Wineries prefer that you refer to Santa Maria Valley” when talking about area wines, said Lee Nordlund of Byron Vineyards. “Santa Maria Valley is the most commonly used viticultural appellation, and the one consumers are most likely to find on labels” of wines made in the area.

There’s a reason for that. Pinot Noirs grown in the Santa Maria and the Santa Ynez valleys “seem to burst with luscious strawberry fruit, with herbal tones,” writes Mary Ewing-Mulligan, a certified Wine Master, author and co-founder of the International Wine Center school in Manhattan.

Fueled by critical praise like that and led by small “boutique” and family-owned wineries like Au Bon Climat, Santa Barbara County wines have since gained international recognition as well. “Santa Barbara County wines are getting lots and lots of accolades, especially the Pinot Noirs, Chardonnays and Rhone varietals,” says Gladys Horiuchi of the Wine Institute in San Francisco.

Winemaking a Family Affair
The praise seems even sweeter - as does the success - because most of the Foxen Canyon and Santa Ynez Valley wineries are family owned. “We have a lot of ‘mom and pop’ members,” says the Beth Reiswig, director of the Santa Barbara County Vintner’s Association.

The mom-and-pop winemaking and wine marketing strategy of Santa Ynez and Foxen Canyon worked because the moms and pops worked a lot, she says.

“You have people like Jim Clendenin of Au Bon Climat who traveled 265 or 285 days a year, bringing his wines into restaurants all around the world to put this place on the map,” Reiswig notes.

It worked so well that vineyard plantings in Santa Barbara County have jumped “from 8,000 acres in 1995 to 18,000 acres in a five-year span. That’s a tremendous growth,” Reiswig marvels.

The county Vintners Association now has 52 members. “Only one of them is in Santa Barbara. The rest are in the Santa Ynez and Foxen Canyon areas, and Lompoc,” Reiswig explains.

In addition to area pioneers like Clendenin of Au Bon Climat in Los Olivos (“He’s sort of the father of Santa Barbara County wine,” Reiswig explains) and Brooks Firestone of Firestone Vineyards, the area has also recently drawn some of wine’s biggest players.

Robert Mondavi now owns and operates Byron Vineyard & Winery in Foxen Canyon outside Santa Maria; Kendall-Jackson owns and operates Cambria Winery & Vineyards there as well.

The two “big guns” of wine are growing and making Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Syrah and Sangiovese varietals there.

Climate Is The Key
Mondavi felt its Byron Vineyards in Foxen Canyon is in an ideal spot to grow Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays. The east-west orientation of Foxen Canyon draws in ocean breezes and coastal fogs, according to Byron winemaker Ken Brown.

That, plus the southern latitude of the valley, makes for a long, cool growing season - one of the longest in the world. The factors combine to give Foxen Canyon grapes more “hang time.” That’s winemaker talk for the amount of time the grapes spend on the vine, ripening.

The long hang time, cool days, and sandy loam soils in Byron’s Foxen Canyon vineyards give its Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays “a bright and lively varietal character,” according to Brown.

Cambria’s winemaker, Fred Holloway, also sings the praises of Foxen Canyon’s unique cool climate and soils. They combine to allow Cambria to make Chardonnays with “rich, tropical flavors, and Pinot Noir with lush berry, plum and spice characters,” he says.

Cambria is also growing and producing a small quantity of Viognier and Syrah grapes and wines in Foxen Canyon.

Though Syrah plantings are a small part of Foxen Canyon vineyards, they make up a big part of Santa Ynez Valley plantings. “We have a lot of microclimates in the Santa Ynez Valley, and growers are really taking advantage of those microclimates,” Reiswig explains.

“We have a lot of Syrah in the Santa Ynez Valley area; Syrah takes a bit of heat…the Santa Ynez Valley gets extremely warm at some times, but it also gets extremely cool.”

The many microclimates of the Santa Ynez Valley - which occasionally sees snow on the surrounding mountains in wintertime - enable growers there to make both excellent cool-climate Chardonnays as well as warmth-craving Syrahs, Reiswig explains.

And the finicky Pinot Noir grape does well in the Santa Ynez Valley too, she says.

Many Santa Maria Valley and Santa Ynez wineries are part of the Central Coast “Rhone Ranger” trend: winemakers and vineyard owners who believe the area has much in common with the Rhone Valley Area in France. They are and planting (and making wine) accordingly.

So far, Santa Barbara’s Rhone Rangers are enjoying lots of success. “We have become known for our Rhone varietals,” Reiswig says. “They’ve rocketed us into a whole new league.”

The New California Wine Country
That “new league” has meant a boom in Wine Country Visitors to Santa Maria, Foxen Canyon and the Santa Ynez Valley. There are 53 vineyards and wineries in the Santa Maria Valley and neighboring Santa Ynez Valley, and 35 tasting rooms. Sunset Magazine, Wine Spectator and other magazines have featured the area.

And Conde Nast Traveler positively waxed poetic about it. Foxen Canyon, Santa Maria and Santa Ynez Valley Wine Country, the magazine enthused, are “a soft land whose shoulders are vine-velveted, oak dotted, and fog-flourished, producing the equal of any of the great winemaking regions of the world.”

The rugged beauty of the region, and the fact that the area is only 90 miles from the greater metropolitan Los Angeles area has led to a lot of weekend wine country visits by Southern California urbanites.

“That’s our biggest market - Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego; southern California in general,” says Reiswig. “We’re their backyard wine country.”

The spring Vintners Festival, a weekend event held in April, now draws some 3,600 visitors, 75 percent of them from Southern California. The autumn Harvest Festival, a one-day event, usually draws another 1,800.

Local vintners know the Santa Maria and Santa Ynez valleys haven’t surpassed the Napa Valley’s reputation or fame - yet.

“We’re new. We’re young. Twenty-five years is really young for a wine producing area. Napa has history; Napa has vineyards that date back 50, 75, 100 years,” Reiswig says. “But if you look at our appellation, and the quality of our fruit, this is one of the premium wine areas of the world, especially for Pinot Noir and Chardonnays.”

To find out more about Santa Barbara County Wines, check out the Santa Barbara County Vintner’s Association Website at www.sbcountywines.com.

- Teresa Mariani is a longtime newspaper journalist and freelance writer based in San Luis Obispo.

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