Wine Tasting at Santa Barbara Winery

Since I started my Santa Barbara Wine Trail project, I have been looking forward to a visit to the Santa Barbara Winery. It is the oldest winery in Santa Barbara county and has a reputation for a great tasting experience. I found my own visit to be quite delightful, with the tasting room backdropped by aging barrels and the wines unique and well crafted.

I had planned to visit SB Winery earlier in my Santa Barbara tasting journey, but each weekend I walked over it was always quite busy. I recently found a rare cold and rainy day to go wine tasting, hoping the sour weather might keep some visitors away and give me a chance for a more relaxed and personal tasting experience.

I was correct and walked out of the drizzle and into Santa Barbara’s uncrowded, traditional looking tasting room. The wall of aging wine barrels and the friendly faces behind the bar provided a proper winery welcome.

Santa Barbara Winery offers 3 different tasting flights, each of them $15 and include a souvenir wine glass and a little bag of bread sticks to snack on.

With the urban wine trail membership, you are able to choose any of the three flights to try. I chose the mixed flight to get a better sense of what Santa Barbara Winery had to offer.

I started out with the 2016 Chenin Blanc. It was light, crisp and fairly dry; reminding me of a bubbly-less champagne.

Next I tried the 2017 Chardonnay which was fruit forward and acidic, with citrus and apple coming through. It had slight oak and butter notes, but they were well balanced, with the fruits as the dominant flavors.

The 2014 Pinot Noir was next on the menu. It had a fresh, fruity smell and tasted of strawberry, red currant, slight oak and more minerality than I expected. It felt like a “starter” Pinot to me, not super complex nor as memorable as some of the finer Pinots I have tried in Santa Barbara, but good fruity flavors and easy to drink. It was damn fine for the case sale price of $10 a bottle they were having at that time though!

Next up was the 2014 Petit Verdot. This wine varietal is a favorite of mine for its unique umami flavor and strong structure it commonly contains. Santa Barbara’s Petit Verdot had a floral smell. With my initial taste I was hit with high tannins and high alcohol flavors which evolved along to delicious raspberry and herb notes. Even with all these intense flavors, it somehow still had a really smooth mouthfeel.

Last on my tasting flight was the 2014 Lagrein. This is an Italian varietal of which I had never heard of. Evidently it is a fairly obscure grape from northeast Italy that is relatively rare in Italy and even more so in America.

The Lagrein was super dark purple and super tasty! It was fruit forward with a balanced profile and a nice oak finish. Actually the winery does a great job of describing this wine:

My host for my tasting describes this wine as chewy. And once I tried it I knew exactly what he meant. The flavors linger on your palate and make you want to chew the air as your tongue tries to figure out exactly what it has experienced.

The Lagrein is a very well crafted wine and a great finish to the flight. Lucky for me it was not my finish. During my inevitable chatting with the wine-tenders, one of the ladies mentioned their 2013 late harvest Riesling that they currently had on sale. So I mentioned that I love dessert wines.

She said there was a bottle open and she gave me a taste. This wine was truly divine. It tasted of sweet apple, honey and almond. It was at the perfect age for a white dessert wine, where all the flavors are well blended together, but none have yet started to fade. I loved this wine and being that is was on-sale for a great price, I decided to get a bottle!

My visit to Santa Barbara Winery was amazing. Their tasting room is beautiful, with large spaces for the large crowds this winery often attracts. They also have a nice outdoor area where you can taste outside on the countless sunny days in SB.

I found the wines to be delicious and overall well priced, especially for such a well known Santa Barbara winery. The tasting experience is amazing with the complementary breadsticks, sovonier glass and tasty and diverse wine list. Santa Barbara Winery provides a great intro into Santa Barbara County wines. 

I would recommend a visit to Santa Barbara Winery and I look forward to returning to try some more of their wines along with at visit next door to their sister tasting room at Lafond.

Cheers,

Alan Evans

— Visited on March 2, 2019