Editor’s Note: With the change in ownership of Buttonwood Farm Winery & Vineyard last year, longtime winemaker Karen Steinwachs needed a new facility in which to craft her own wine, Seagrape Cellars. Enter her colleague and friend Kathy Joseph, owner of Lompoc’s Fiddlehead Cellars. The duo — who pack decades of experience — share cellar space, equipment and laughs.
“You know how a wine year goes,” longtime winemaker Karen Steinwachs told me over a dinner last month. “It’s pruning and bottling, and then suddenly harvest rolls around again.”
In a nutshell, yes.
Seagrape Wine Company includes two labels. Seagrape Cellars is named for the seagrape tree (coccoloba uvifera) and reminds its owners — Steinwachs and her fiancé, “Crabby” Steve Escobar — of their mutual winemaking roots and Karen’s time living in the Caribbean. Le Pecheur (“The Fisherman”) represents Escobar’s longtime “day” job as a commercial fisherman.
I joined the couple to sample two of their new releases: The 2022 Seagrape Sauvignon Blanc from La Presa Vineyard, and Le Pecheur syrah rosé from one of their estate vineyards (Joaquin’s). Some of the rosé was bottled in 375 ml bottles, specifically for wine lists at restaurants, including Lake Cachuma’s Hook’d Bar and Grill, Escobar said.
The rosé is pure, fresh strawberry in a glass — perfect for seafood (after all, it’s made by a fisherman) — a juicy burger or by itself.
Steinwachs was thrilled to get grapes from Solvang’s La Presa Vineyard for 2022 for Seagrape Cellars’ first sauvignon blanc. La Presa is expertly managed by longtime farmer/winemaker Andy Ibarra. The fruit is “really clean, and the sauvignon blanc own-rooted Clone 1,” she said.
One photo of sauvignon blanc being pressed at Fiddlehead in early September accompanied the first story in this series, and that juice is now this wine.
The longtime winemaker is just as delighted with the final product — “this wine just jumps out of the glass!” The only downside: Since grape yields were down all over, she only netted 52 cases.
What food would best pair with this zesty wine? “Goat cheese, or crab,” Steinwachs said, nodding directly at Escobar, the crab fisherman.
His label, Le Pecheur, boasts an artistic history: It was designed from a photograph, circa 1999, of Escobar with his dory boat on a Southern California beach, Steinwachs explained. An artist who utilizes palette knives (rather than brushes) then painted a rendition of the original photo, which in turn was photographed, and became the actual label.
Steinwachs and Escobar recently completed a remodel of their historic but long-neglected home in Los Olivos. During the remodel, they lived in a second home also on the property.
On the hillside behind both homes are the estate vineyards for Seagrape Cellars and Le Pecheur — the already-producing Joaquin’s, which Escobar named for his grandfather, and, now three years in the ground, Jacks’ Vineyard, named for a prior owner of the land whose surname was Jacks, Steinwachs said.
While cleaning up the overgrown land around the homes and vineyards, she and Escobar unearthed a treasure: a rusty pipe corral-style gate with “Jacks Ranch” spelled in big wrought-iron letters between the pipe rails.
Growing in Joaquin’s Vineyard are syrah, chenin blanc, melon de Bourgogne and alicante bouschet grapes, Steinwachs said. Jacks’ Vineyard, at roughly half an acre, contains sauvignon blanc and cabernet franc vines. Come this fall, those Jacks’ vines will reach their third leaf (year), making them viable for harvesting.
Early one chilly February Saturday morning, longtime Santa Barbara County vineyard manager Francisco Ramirez and his crew pruned Jacks’ vines and trained them to the trellis. Up until this winter, those young vines were allowed to grow “wild” and develop multiple shoots from the ground up, Steinwachs said.
She met Ramirez, who over the years has farmed vineyards for Pence, Melville and Brewer-Clifton, among others, during her years at Buttonwood Farm Vineyard & Winery.
Ramirez explained his methodology for young vines — minimal cuts, just enough to keep each vine’s energy in balance. These Jacks’ vines will be cane pruned; each winter, a new cane is tied to the trellis, and new green shoots grow skyward from that annual cane.
“Cane pruning is my preference, because it provides new wood (the new cane) each year, not simply new shoots from the same cane, as with spur pruning,” Steinwachs said.
Laurie Jervis can be reached via winecountrywriter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are her own.
