How Santa Barbara Became a Wine Town (and Where To Go Tasting)

Santa Barbara wine country got a slow start compared to Northern California’s famous regions, but people have been making wine here since the 1780s. The first modern vineyards were planted in the 1960s, and the wine business grew slowly in the ‘70s and ‘80s, led mostly by innovators who took an experimental approach to figuring out what worked best here. The area’s first real national attention came with the release of the movie Sideways (2004), which highlighted the region’s pinot noir. Today, the county has seven distinct American Viticultural Areas (better known as AVAs) and more than 20,000 acres (8,093 hectares) of wine grapes.

Margerum believes that Santa Barbara County is one of the most perfect places in all of California to make wine. “We have the ocean right near the mountains, and what that creates is one of the coldest, driest climates in California, which yields lower-alcohol, higher-acid wines,” he explains. “That's what everybody wants now. They don't want big, high-alcohol wines; they want lighter, more food-friendly wines.”

The county’s east-west valleys also create a number of different microclimates, so vintners can make a variety of different wines—from elegant pinot noirs and chardonnays to flavorful cabernets and sauvignon blancs—depending on where their vineyards are located. And because the area is less established than Napa and Sonoma, it still attracts innovative wine makers who plant a wide range of varietals, from Italian grapes like tocai friulano to more obscure French grapes, like clairette and picpoul.

For an overview of the region: The Margerum Wines tasting room, in the Santa Barbara Hotel, is one of the few places in town where you can really get an overview of the entire county, including all of the different AVAs. “You can taste from the east to the west. Every appellation in the Santa Ynez Valley is represented,” says Margerum.

Another option is the Santa Barbara Wine Collective, a tasting room that hosts wines from a number of different wineries. “It’s kind of a neat thing that you can go and taste a bunch of different wines in one place,” says Margerum, though he notes that, since different wineries have joined or left the collective over the years, the wines can vary in quality.

For wine with a meal: If you’d prefer to try local wines with dinner, head to Bouchon, a popular downtown restaurant that focuses on local ingredients. “The wine list is pretty much exclusively Santa Barbara wines,” says Margerum. “And they offer almost everything by the glass. They’re willing to just open anything by the glass, which is pretty amazing.”

Another good option is the Stonehouse at the San Ysidro Ranch resort, which has a Grand Award from Wine Spectator magazine and a cellar of 12,000 bottles. While the restaurant offers wine from all across the globe, it also has a strong selection of local wines, including verticals (bottles of the same wine from many different years) of a number of sought-after wines.

For something a little bit different: If you want to learn about new wine trends, head to Satellite, which bills itself as a farm-to-table, farm-to-glass restaurant and natural wine shop. Their wine list focuses on wines made with old techniques and minimal intervention, like pétillant naturel or “pet-nat” (sparkling wines bottled during their first fermentation), orange wines, and wines from tiny, “underground” labels that only produce very few bottles every year.

For a deluxe winery adventure: If you want to see wine country but only have time for one site tour, Margerum recommends going to Stolpman Vineyards, outside of Los Olivos, for an in-depth tasting. Owner Pete Stolpman will often host customers himself, and there are a variety of experiences, including an educational vineyard hike.