Kirk Wiles’ wine label encompasses two tasting rooms — one on each coast of the United States — a handful of vineyards and one winery, located on historic property in Virginia.
Wiles is founder and CEO of Paradise Springs Winery, a single brand that utilizes grapes from two states — California and Virginia — and bicoastal independent operations.
On the day of our interview in late February, Wiles was in Virginia, where 5 inches of snow had fallen the night before. The winery and tasting room are located in Clifton, Va., near the Bull Run River in Fairfax County, in “the gateway to Virginia Wine Country,” as its website notes.
“Paradise Springs is special in part because it is the closest winery/tasting room to the Beltway, or Washington D.C.,” and thus attracts many tourists, Wiles said.
The site’s historic roots originate in a land grant from Lord Fairfax in 1716 down through multiple generations of the Kincheloe family and features a refurbished log cabin that dates to the 1700s, according to the winery website.
Wiles and his family opened the winery in late 2006/early 2007 and the tasting room in 2010, he recalled.
Virginia’s acreage planted to estate vineyards continues to increase, and its wines are “growing in popularity,” but the state as a whole lacks enough planted acreage to fully support its wine industry, he said.
While Virginia has wine appellations (American Viticultural Areas), “they are not well known” like those across California and the West Coast. The state is now home to about 300 wineries, Wiles noted. By contrast, both the Paso Robles and Santa Barbara County regions, each with multiple AVAs, have more than 200 wine labels apiece.
Wiles first set his sights on Santa Barbara County during a winetasting trip after traveling to Los Angeles. In particular, he tried several pinot noirs from the Sta. Rita Hills region.
Today, with a tasting room in the Funk Zone (210 State St.), Wiles states: “We took our (Virginia) brand to another region: Santa Barbara County. We were looking to engage a new audience with our (existing) brand.”
I asked Wiles which Paradise Springs wines are the most popular, based on their vineyard locations. The Santa Barbara County favorites are the pinot noir and rosé, and from Virginia, the petite verdot-tannat blend (PVT) and the cabernet franc, he said.
“We get our Bordeaux grapes from Happy Canyon and our pinot noir, syrah and chardonnay from the Sta. Rita Hills,” Wiles said.
Unlike California in general or the Sta. Rita Hills or Happy Canyon of Santa Barbara AVAs in particular, Virginia doesn’t have one “single” grape that thrives in a specific region, Wiles said. However, among the wine grapes that do well there are viognier, cabernet franc, petite verdot, tannat, petit manseng — and Norton, which is indigenous to Virginia, he said.
“We are in a sweet spot for these wines, climate wise, and we get positive feedback for the varietals that some on the West Coast might deem more obscure (Norton and petit manseng).
“Our X factor is that we have these two wines that help open people’s eyes that great wines can be made elsewhere within the United States” — other than in more well-known areas such as California, Oregon and Washington.
Earlier this year, I sampled Paradise Springs’ 2016 Petit Manseng at the Funk Zone tasting room and found it intriguing. Another white grape varietal and a 2016 vintage, the Sommet Blanc, I described as quiet, nutty and slightly sweet.
Wiles was in the thick of opening the Santa Barbara tasting room in December 2017 when smoke from the Thomas Fire darkened Santa Barbara. When the deadly mud and debris flows occurred the following month, Wiles decided to help both the victims and the first responders who put their lives on the line.
He enlisted his longtime friend, actor and artist Billy Zane, and after some discussion, Zane offered to create a memorial painting that could transition into a wine label. Wiles chose Paradise Springs’ first Santa Barbara County-produced rosé — the 2017 Pink Ash Rosé — to sport the special label.
On Feb. 16, 2018, Zane toured the burn and flood zone and collected ash and mud samples. Later that afternoon, with Wiles at the historic Sanford & Benedict Vineyard on Santa Rosa Road, Zane mixed the samples with paint to create a piece of art that now hangs in the Santa Barbara tasting room and graces the bottles of rosé.
The 2018 vintage of the same wine had just been released when Wiles and I spoke in February, and it had just earned a 93-point rating from Wine Enthusiast, “which is a very high score for a rosé,” he said.
One-third of all proceeds from Pink Ash Rosé bottles are funneled to the organizations that support first responders, Wiles said.
He said Paradise Springs’ Santa Barbara County-sourced wines are produced in Buellton by consulting winemaker and Santa Barbara County icon Doug Margerum and winemaker Rob Cox.
Click here for more information about Paradise Springs Winery.
— 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.