Whitcraft Winery – Tasting with Drake – Santa Barbara Urban Wine Trail # 3

This is a post in my Santa Barbara Urban Wine Trail Series. See the summary article here for general Wine Trail info or to read about the 27 other wineries!

Today I visited Whitcraft Winery in the Midtown area of Santa Barbara. I was lucky to show up and have Drake, the owner and winemaker, as the pourer for my tasting. It is always special to have the winemaker explaining the wines to you and going into details of how and why the wine was made the way it was.

What is special about Whitcraft Winery is in fact the way the wine is made. Drake and his team pride themselves on leaving as little human imprint on the finished product as possible. They select high quality grapes and usually ferment them as whole clusters. They then try to do minimal work on the wine, letting the natural flavors shine. I applaud their efforts to craft high quality wine, in the most natural they can.

The Whitcraft tasting experience is very informal as the winery is in a nondescript industrial park with its tasting room situated basically in a hallway leading to the wine making floor. It is decorated with cool old bottles and photos from the earlier days of the winery. There is also the friendly winery dog, Terra, who was quick to greet me.

I started off my tasting at Whitcraft with their 2016 Santa Rita Hills Pence Ranch Chardonnay. It was super crisp, with very high acidity and lacked that common butter flavor you sometimes have in California Chards. It was definitely a Bordeaux style chardonnay and had intense fruit flavors. I was a big fan!

Next I tasted two 2016 Pinot Noir wines from Santa Rita Hills Pence Ranch. So they were the same year and from the same location, but were different clones of Pinot. Amazing the difference in flavor. The Pommard Clone was fruity and had strong fresh strawberry flavors. The general style of high acid wines continued in these examples as well. The 828 clone still had solid fruit, but the earthy notes really dominated the glass. I was getting some musty mushroom type flavors from this one.

Next up was the 828 clone from Santa Rita Hills again, but this one was the 2015. Drake explained that 2015 was a much drier drought year, which caused the wine to have much higher tannin and even more earthy and spicy flavors, kinda like 5 spice powder.

Overall the Pinot Noirs had good complexity and unique flavors, but they were not my favorites. I understand the style Drake is going after with his wines and I think he is hitting his mark on them. I just don't find that type of Pinot Noir to be my cup of tea, or glass of wine I should say. They are also definitely on the high end price wise at $60-$70. You are paying for the high quality grapes, the labor intensive and more natural methods, and high end market in Santa Barbara.

The final two wines I tried were the 2016 Granache and the 2016 Syrah. The Granache was a special treat, as it is not usually out for people to taste but was opened the day before for a special tasting. This wine had a beautiful aroma, full of lavender and orange blossom. It also had a gorgeous pink/orange color. It tasted a lot like rose petals with a really light oak finish. This was a great drinking Granache.

The Syrah was super peppery and herby on the nose, which carried through to its taste as well. It had high tannins with some vanilla and herb flavors. It would go great with some pulled pork or bbq chicken sandwiches!

The Syrah and the Chardonnay were my two favorites of the tasting, with the Syrah being more reasonably priced at around $38.

Overall the tasting experience was pretty relaxed and informal. I really enjoyed talking with Drake and learning about the winery's history as well as some personal stories about the Santa Barbara wine scene.

If you are a fan of old world style wines or more naturally made wines at the higher end of the market then you should definitely check out Whitcraft Wineries in Santa Barbara!

- Visited on October 5th, 2018.