The Ritz-Carlton Bacara hotel has opened its on-site tasting room, featuring a selection of bottles, by-the-glass options, wine flights and small bites, all of which are sourced exclusively from Santa Barbara County.
Accompanying the wines are a curated selection of cheeses, local olives, charcuterie and artisanal chocolates.
Select menu highlights: cabernet sauvignon from Brave & Maiden Estate, the 2017 Sparkling “Goat Bubbles” by Flying Goat Cellars, or the Santa Barbara County “premium flight,” which includes a selection of pours across multiple producers to showcase the different styles across the region.
“We have opened the Bacara Tasting Room … to tell our guests something we are incredibly proud of — that they have arrived in a world-class wine region,” said Felicia Balli, the food and beverage manager at Bacara, 8301 Hollister Ave. in western Goleta.
“Our space provides guests the opportunity to meet the faces behind our favorite local wines and hear the stories that make Santa Barbara County so special.”
The new site also invites regionally based winemakers to interact with guests to further enrich the connection with Central Coast wines.
Wednesday through Sunday, the Bacara Wine Tasting Room will host the following wineries: Star Lane, SAMsARA, Babcock Winery, Pence Vineyards & Winery and Sanguis, respectively.
More details on the five featured wineries:
Star Lane Vineyard on Wednesdays — Founded in 1996 by owners Mary and Jim Dierberg, Star Lane focuses on the more robust and powerful Bordeaux varieties produced in their Santa Maria Valley, Star Lane Ranch and Drum Canyon vineyards. The entire operation is one big family affair, with the Dierbergs’ grown children and their spouses intimately involved in the day-to-day operations of the vineyard and winery.
SAMsARA Wine Co. on Thursdays — This boutique winery produces approximately 2,500 cases of pinot noir, syrah, grenache and chardonnay from its micro sites within the Santa Rita Hills. Winemaker Matt Brady works hard in the vineyard to ensure that grapes reach the winery with perfect ripeness, flavor, acidity and tannins with as little intervention as possible.
Babcock Winery & Vineyards on Fridays —Founded by winemaker Bryan Babcock in 1983 in the heart of the Santa Rita Hills, Babcock focuses on small production bottlings of unique, terroir-driven wines.
Pence Vineyards & Winery on Saturdays — Pence is a small vineyard and winery in the Santa Rita Hills, producing estate-grown and organically farmed chardonnay, pinot noir, gamay and syrah.
Sanguis on Sundays — These wines are created in a converted warehouse in the heart of Santa Barbara’s industrial zone. Sanguis’ grapes are grown in the tranquil Santa Ynez and Santa Maria Valleys, more specifically, the Santa Rita Hills, Alisos Canyon and the hills east of Santa Maria.
The Bacara’s tasting room is open from 12:30 to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.
Turning Tides’ New Brands
Alisa Jacobson, winemaker and proprietor of Santa Ynez’s Turning Tide Wines, has debuted “AJ” and “Rare North,” two new value-driven wine brands that represent her two winemaking homes.
The “AJ” portfolio allows Jacobson to lean on her California roots, while the Rare North label showcases her talents in the Willamette Valley, where she sources grapes from the Halona Woods Vineyard in Mount Pisgah, Oregon.
Jacobson farms that site with vintner John Wagner (Peake Ranch Winery and John Sebastiano Vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills) in the Mount Pisgah, Polk County, Oregon appellation.
The “AJ” brand, founded during the pandemic, features competitively priced wines sourced sustainably and organically farmed grapes grown throughout California.
“My goal with “AJ” is to produce the kinds of wines that my family and friends enjoy daily at the dinner table,” Jacobson said. “They’re ready to drink upon release and immensely quaffable.”
Rare North, established with the 2021 vintage, is a collaboration between Jacobson and Sean Best, a Santa Barbara-based graduate artist from the ArtCenter College of Design of Pasadena.
The geographic wonders in the Pacific Northwest inspired Best to create a label that showcases the landscape filled with rivers, unique thermal patterns and its ancient mix of soils deposited by historic floods.
The name of the wine is inspired by the Willamette River, which traverses a rare northward flow through the Willamette Valley. Rare North’s grapes are sourced from the Halona Woods Vineyard in the new Mount Pisgah, Polk County, Oregon AVA from both of Oregon’s famed soils, Bellpine and Jory.
Jacobson established Turning Tide Wines in 2018, and practices environmentally conscious farming and regenerative agricultural practices, she said.
“All of the vineyards I work with are farmed in an environmentally conscious manner to protect water purity and to encourage soil and vine health,” she said.
“I never employ the use of chemical herbicides because of the harmful effects they have on groundwater and soil health.”
In a Noozhawk story earlier this year, Jacobson outlined her involvement with the West Coast Smoke Exposure Task Force.
She’s a lead researcher and organizer and has continued to meet with the university professors who have devoted portions of their respective academic careers to issues with smoke taint in grapes.
In December 2021, a team of university researchers received at $7.65 million grant to study smoke’s impact on grapes and wine. The West Coast Smoke Exposure Task Force plans to give viticulturists and winemakers better tools to manage or prevent damage from smoke taint.