For My Love of Wine!

I decided to take a little drive this weekend to visit some old and new friends of mine in Santa Barbara Wine country. My best friend who is as big a wine collector and lover as me tagged along. Our first stop was at the very famous Sea Smoke Cellars. http://www.seasmokecellars.com/

My love of Pinot Noir started 6 years ago. My favorite varietal has always been Cabernet. In the beginning I learned so much about wines from both France and California. I started purchasing Cabernet's and Bordeaux back as far as 1997. Yeah my collection is out of control. Thank god for Wine Storage. When it came to Pinot Noir though I am a little under educated with Burgundy. Not to mention I don't have the wallet right now in tough economic times to purchase a lot of wines period. So my favoritism is a bit lopsided toward California. The first Pinot I ever started to purchase came from Sea Smoke Cellars. My vintages go back to 2003. The only bottle I have left from the 03 is the "TEN". I am holding onto that wine a few more years. Every other vintage I still have a few bottles of.

Sea Smoke is in the process of moving to a bigger facility out of the Lompoc "Wine Ghetto". The new facility will house all of there equipment and store all of there wines. I still don't believe that they are gonna open a formal tasting room, but who knows. We were not able to see the new facility on this trip but I am already planning a new trip back in late August to check it out. For now I drove by the old facility to see if the Vice President of sales Victor Gallegos was around. There was no one around so I guess we will have to meet in a few months.

We decided to take our chances in the Lompoc "Wine Ghetto". Several wineries make there home there with almost a half dozen having tasting rooms. Our first stop was the famous fiddlehead Cellars

I have always always loved Kathy Josephs Sauvignon Blanc. It is one of my favorites. Her wines were tasting really great that day. In particular her Willamette Valley Pinot. This wine showed all of those traditional cherry, cola, aromas. I was very impressed. We asked the lady working here if anybody new had moved into the Ghetto. She pointed us to our next stop which was Nicolaysen Family Vineyards. http://www.nfvwine.com/

Bob Nicolaysen is the owner and operator and was happy to assist us this day. He gave us this great poem above, that I believe truly shows the potential of real wine making. He allowed us to taste 5 wines. 2 pinots, 2 sirahs and a late harvest dessert wine. Both of his pinots were well aged. Bob prefers them this way. The first was 2001 vintage. Which still had good tannins and berry fruit. The other Pinot I did not care for. The wine had to heavy of a fungal / Truffle nose which kinda turned me off. the Sirah's were nice wines but a bit heavy on price at $38.00 per and the late harvest has never been my thing. Although I did pick up a bottle at Fiddlehead earlier for my wife. The things we do for our spouses. Anyways! The only reason I did not buy any wines from Nicolaysen was that tough economic times thing. Which made me have a strict budget. Overall a fun stop, which I do suggest you check out someday.

Our third stop was at Samsara. http://www.samsarawine.com/ Which is a new project by Chad Melville. Chad's father owns Melville Vineyards, http://www.melvillewinery.com/ Melville Pinot Noir's are some of the best in Central coast. Samsara shows alot of potential as well. We tasted 3 Pinots, 2 sirahs and 1 rose. All the wines showed a lot of the same characteristics from Melville wines. My only complaint would have to be that pricing should be a bit lower for a new upstart project. I was very satisfied though with all of the wines, but again no purchases were made.

Our next stop was at Ampelos Cellars. http://www.ampeloscellars.com/ They practice and promote bio dynamic farming here. The owner Peter and his wife Rebecca were pouring that day. I met Peter back in what I believe was 2004. I tasted there very first produced wines then. I believed they were pretty good with a lot of potential to come. Peter didn't remember me this day as I mentioned that story to him, but it really doesn't matter. Peter is one very fun host! He makes you very welcomed and he plays the part of the dirt farmer very good as you see in the photo below. Oh! and his stepson happens to be winemaker at Sea Smoke. Another great person to hang out with.

Our last stop was one of reasons I wanted to come up this weekend. Besides Sea Smoke which falls at the top of my Pinot Noir list of favorites. A very small producer named Paul Lato Wines http://www.paullatowines.com/ invited me up for a barrel sample of his upcoming wines. Now I know that I have mentioned the "tough economic times" thingy already but last year I had the chance to taste Paul Lato's "Suerte" Pinot at my 40th birthday bash. The wine blew me away. So I made sure to get on Paul's waiting list the very next day. To my surprise I was allowed to buy some of his wines a few weeks ago. Yeah I dropped a boat load of money, but I believe it is gonna be well worth it. All of Paul's wines score very high on both Spectator and Parker's websites. All of his wines are under 100 cases of each. I am not usually a "score whore" kinda guy, but I do make exceptions and when a great tiny producer comes around, it is a real great treat. As I thought Paul is an exceptional guy. He is a trained wine sommelier. He really is on his way to making a Big name for himself. I was very very impressed with every wine that he poured for us. He even allowed us a taste of a new Pinot he will release next year from a plot of land in the Pisoni Vineyard estate. Talk about a big name in the game. Try getting wine from there. Mailing list only I believe. We had a great time hanging out with Paul. We talked about wine and the upcoming harvest. I might get my hands dirty and help him out with the harvest! I can't wait to get back there.

Overall we had a great great time. I am so very fortunate to live just 3 hours away from this beautiful area of California. So making a day trip is so much fun.

Cheers