Santa Barbara County’s 2025 wine grape harvest — pegged by one longtime winemaker as “early and long” — has wound to a close.
That vintner and four others took time from long days harvesting and processing grapes to detail the quality and quantity of various varietals and marvel with me about the weather, which this year dished up both cooler temperatures and record-setting November rains.
The cooler growing season, similar to that of 2023, will likely mean lower overall yields, but the trade-off is grapes that display “incredible” quality from cool, consistent temperatures and few — if any — late-season heat spikes.
My first interview was with winemaker Matt Dees of The Hilt and Jonata estate wineries, as well as Mail Road Wines, where he is a partner and winemaker. We met at The Hilt on Oct. 9.
While Dees and his crews had enjoyed a “peaceful and steady harvest pace” to that point, rains were forecast for the following week, and he was cautious of what lay ahead, weather wise.
His harvest started seven weeks prior, and while most of all the estates’ pinot noir, chardonnay, merlot and syrah grapes were already in the cellar, the cabernet sauvignon, petit verdot and cabernet franc remained on the vines.
“Those grapes all have tougher skins, and should do OK in the rain,” Dees said. Still, he planned to continue picking the day we met and the days leading up to the forecasted rain.
He likened the 2025 season — his 21st at The Hilt — to containing “snippets” of prior years’ weather, such as both 2021 and 2023, “but colder.” This year, lower temperatures felt like “it was spring, and then it was Labor Day,” with no summer in between.
As a result, at The Hilt, pinot noir berries were smaller so cluster weight was down, but at Jonata, tonnage predictions were “spot on” with as many as three tons per acre, Dees said.
In Eastern Santa Ynez Valley, Rhone Grape Varietals Lean Into Fall
Ryan Roark, a longtime viticulturist for his Roark Wines label and those of other small producers, in 2019 accepted a position managing the vineyards of Demetria Estate off Foxen Canyon Road. The next year, he took over the cellar.
After cultivating “12 or 13 acres on five properties” in the years before Demetria, Roark said he now is happy to be director of viticulture and winemaking for just one site.
While he still makes a couple hundred cases of Roark Wine, his focus for the past five vintages has been Demetria’s estate wines, mostly red and white Rhone varietals, among them cinsaut, counoise, grenache, grenache blanc, marsanne, mourvèdre, picpoul blanc, rousanne, syrah, tempranillo and viognier. He sources other grapes, including chardonnay, pinot noir, sauvignon blanc and, this year, riesling.
Second-generation vintner Constantine “Alexis” Zahoudanis owns and operates Demetria, and the day I met Roark, Zahoudanis was cheerfully serving guests and singing along to music. Zahoudanis’ parents founded Demetria in 2006 after buying the vineyard from the family of pioneering winemaker Andrew Murray. Demetria is Alexis’ sister, Roark noted.
Today, the 200-acre Demetria is 35 different blocks on 45 acres of biodynamically farmed grapevines. A flock of estate sheep graze — and fertilize — the hillside blocks. Roark said he is leaning from biodynamics toward regenerative agriculture, which discourages all but very minimal tillage of soil.
Its elevation means Demetria is cooler than the Santa Ynez Valley in general, according to Roark.
“This year, we had a very mild summer,” he said, “and in September, a little heat but not crazy heat.”
When we met outside the hillside tasting room on Oct. 17, the county was between storms. Roark wasn’t worried. While at least one-third of Demetria’s grapes were still on the vines, “we have bomb proof varieties here.”
Emily Meyers, Demetria’s winemaker and operations director, also helps with inventory in the tasting room, Roark said. Others, including the vineyard foreman, have put in a decade or more; that kind of experience helps a team withstand Mother Nature’s unpredictability.
Like Dees, Roark prefers consistently cooler weather for the quality afforded the final product: the fruit. The 2022 Labor Day heat spike “shut down ripening and stunted the grapes,” he recalled.
The following year, the much cooler season “hit quality out of the park,” he said.
Season’s Rain Total Amazes Kaena Wines’ Pioneering Winemaker
Mikael Sigouin of Kaena Wines came straight to our late-October interview from pressing grenache grapes at his Buellton production facility.
The longtime winemaker, nicknamed the “Grenache King,” does specialize in that Rhone varietal, but in the past 15 years he and his wife/co-owner, Sally Sigouin, have added Bordeaux reds, including cabernet sauvignon, malbec, merlot and petit verdot, to their repertoire.
“Grenache is still my major varietal, but our Bordeauxs are really coming along,” Mikael Sigouin said. He sources those from Stag Canyon Vineyard.
When we spoke, the Sigouins still had fruit out, but with 26 years in the wine industry, they were not panicked by the rain. Still, “more than 2 inches from one storm” turned local weather into a hot topic.
Getting grenache grapes ripe “requires lots of patience,” Sally Sigouin said. Luckily, “Mikael is very patient.”
Like Dees and Roark before him, Mikael Sigouin likened 2025 to 2023, but chillier.
Most of Kaena’s Rhone grapes hail from Tierra Alta Vineyard in Ballard Canyon; Mikael Sigouin estimated that he buys more than 50% of the vineyard each year. Tierra Alta is a steep site with chalky white limestone soil.
In 2024, he joined “the chenin blanc tide” and produced his first, also from Tierra Alta.
After 13 years in the center of Los Olivos, the couple in 2023 relocated Kaena’s tasting room to property owned by The Ranch Church at 800 E. Highway 246.
The spacious but very cozy room, a former horse barn, is surrounded by mature trees. The six-acre vineyard that fronts the highway has been grafted to two acres each of albarino, vermentino and grenache, and the Sigouins anticipate “a good crop” from the estate by fall 2026.
Being here versus in Los Olivos, the couple said, “we can tell our story visually.” Besides, “we can practically fit the entire town of Los Olivos right here.”
Wait — Are You Pouring Bubbles Today?
Despite being my fourth and final interview on Nov. 3, winemakers Karen Steinwachs and Sunshine “Sunny” Doench Stricker are pretty darn sure their chardonnay harvest at Lavender Oak Vineyard on Aug. 15 kicked off the season for the entire county.
Those particular chardonnay grapes are for a label called “FutureSeaKing” — a sparkling collaboration between Doench Stricker, owner/winemaker of Future Perfect, Steinwachs of Seagrape and James Sparks of Kings Carey.
Then, it was off to the races: Steinwachs picked pinot noir for her label from Hibbits Ranch in the Sta. Rita Hills on Aug. 20 and has hustled ever since.
“Harvest this year started early and was long,” she said, “and it’s still going for some people — especially those who have petit verdot!”
While the county saw “a little heat” over Labor Day weekend, temperatures did not soar above 100 degrees, as in 2022.
“Before and after the holiday was cool, so grapes had a long hangtime,” vintner parlance for long, slow ripening — the ideal, Steinwachs noted.
Several inches of rain didn’t damage the hangtime of her cabernet franc — typically one of the last grapes to ripen in early November.
Doench Stricker picked her last grapes — cabernet sauvignon — on Oct. 29.
Back to that three-person collab: The trio made three barrels’ worth in 2024. While Steinwachs recalled being uneasy about how acidic the base juice tasted, Sparks and Doench Stricker, who each have made previous sparklers, reassured Steinwachs, and by now that 2024 has undergone secondary fermentation.
“We have a good triumvirate of experience,” Doench Stricker said, and “Santa Barbara County is the new frontier for sparkling wine!”
She calls herself “super focused” on her own production of bubbly, and with good reason: Each label on Future Perfect’s sparkling wine states, “Tiny Bubbles, Tiny Troubles.”