Sometimes, life presents an option that feels like too much, too soon. Do we leap, or do we wait?
Winemakers Tara Gomez and Mireia Taribo faced such a dilemma more than a year ago when another wine label vacated a tasting room/winery space on North F Street in Lompoc and it became available for rent.
Despite having started with just three barrels of syrah in 2017, the duo jumped at the chance and rented the space for their young label, Camins 2 Dreams. In Taribo’s native Catalan language, “camins” translates to “routes,” or “paths.”
The two, married since 2014, decided that the North F Street space was “perfect, even though we were still very small production,” Gomez said. “It was too good to pass up,” and in June 2018, they moved in.
Taribo’s family came to Lompoc from Spain to “build our bar” and help add the touches that made it home for Camins 2 Dreams, she added.
Gomez, a native of Santa Maria and the daughter of Richard Gomez, a former vice chairman of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, helped the tribe launch its Kitá Wines label in 2010 with just three tons of grapes. Today, Kitá produces about 2,000 cases annually, and Gomez remains at the helm as winemaker.
With the 2018 harvest, Camins 2 Dreams tripled production, according to Gomez and Taribo, and with the pending vintage, “we’ve added a couple more tons — again.”
Both work side by side at Kitá in the Santa Rita Hills Wine Center, and both are consulting for other producers. Taribo works the Santa Ynez Valley wholesale market, getting Camins 2 Dreams on store shelves and restaurant wine lists.
Earlier this summer, the two had hoped to host a grand opening at the tasting room, which they opened in late June, but time slipped away. Now, the 2019 harvest is looming, so any celebration will have to wait until late this year or next, Gomez said.
Current releases are three, all from Sta. Rita Hills’ vineyards: a 2018 grüner veltliner from Spear Vineyards, and a 2018 syrah rosé and 2017 syrah, both from Zotovich. The production ranges from 14 cases for the rosé to 91 for the syrah — in other words, tiny.
The 2017 Zotovich syrah is full and lovely and will, I believe, age beautifully, as will the grüner veltliner.
Taribo said that the clusters in the 2017 syrah were “pretty perfect ones,” in their first year of growth in the newer section of Zotovich vineyard, planted on a hillside above the original planting.
All Camins 2 Dreams wines are made with minimal intervention (foot stomped) and gently crushed and with no additives but for SO2, which is used just before bottling, for preservation, Taribo said.
The minimalist winemaking techniques are ones both women learned while working in Spain, where tradition often still rules a winery.
Their history together dates back to 2006 at J. Lohr Vineyards & Wines in Paso Robles. Gomez, who graduated from California State University, Fresno in 1998, had already worked for several years at J. Lohr, both as an enologist and lab manager. In 2006, Taribo, finishing her degree in enology from a university in Spain, was hired to intern in the barrel room but also helped in the lab.
Gomez had taken her first trip to Spain at age 16. Her family hosted exchange students during her high school years. In 2007 and 2008, she returned to Spain to work harvests alongside Taribo.
After college in Fresno and several vintages in hot Paso Robles, Gomez recalled how she had to adjust to Spain’s late-season harvests that frequently included snow on the ground. In addition, the later picks meant that the grape clusters faced increased risk of the botrytis fungus that typically affects grapes that hang longer on the vine.
“We had to pick up and smell every single grape cluster after harvest to be sure it was free of botrytis,” Gomez said.
The duo are proud of their Camins 2 Dreams wines and plan to boost case production and add new vineyards. Bottled but not yet released is a second syrah, this one from Spear Vineyard, and this harvest they will source a third, from John Sebastiano Vineyard. Future plans also include a Sta. Rita Hills grenache, Gomez said.
The grüner veltliner is true to its Austrian roots; the rosé is sweet/nutty on the nose but bone dry. It was made “straight from the crusher/destemmer, with minimal skin contact — like, five minutes,” Taribo said with a laugh.
When we spoke on Aug. 22, Gomez predicted that the two would start harvesting within about 10 days. “We’ve had a lot of heat lately,” she said. In 2018, she noted, the temperatures were like those in 2010, but now, “we have heat again. This year, August has been hot.”
In 2001, while Gomez was new to J. Lohr, she started her own label, Kalawashaq’ Wine Cellars, and produced wines until 2007. In 2017, she brought that label “back to life,” she said, and it’s under the Kalawashaq’ name that Camins 2 Dreams is produced. Kalawashaq’ means “shell of the turtle” in Samala, the official language of the Chumash.
The Camins 2 Dreams tasting room is located at 313 North F St. in Lompoc. It’s open on Fridays and Saturdays; check availability during the harvest. Click here for more information.
— Laurie Jervis blogs about wine at www.centralcoastwinepress.com, tweets at @lauriejervis and can be reached via winecountrywriter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are her own.