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| Press Release: Concerning the Proposed AVA Expansion A petition to extend the eastern boundaries of the Sta. Rita Hills AVA was recently submitted to TTB by Patrick Shabram. The Sta. Rita Hills AVA lies within the larger Santa Ynez Valley AVA, an east-west transverse valley with a continuum of climatic and geological features influenced by its opening to the Pacific Ocean. The current and original AVA boundaries were carefully and exhaustively determined in 2001 by the original petitioners based on patterns of daily oceanic fog and temperature data. The eastern boundary to the AVA is a north-south range of hills that alters the sea fog pattern and brings an increase in daily temperatures moving east from this boundary. In the opinion of the original petitioners and the Sta. Rita Hills Winegrowers Alliance (SRHWA), it is imperative that the cool-climate environment for winegrowing is maintained. A study of the data in the petition submitted by Mr. Shabram will be reviewed by the Alliance Board, but at this time the SRHWA stands by the integrity of the original and current boundaries. All That Video... VineStories is a wine education website which introduces consumers to limited-production wineries through mini-documentaries. Check it out here! Our road trip and tasting at palate food+wine Recently, a group of Sta. Rita Hills winemakers joined forces
with chef/owner Octavio Becera at palate restaurant. Writer Patricia
Decker was there, and noted: “Glass after glass of sultry
Pinot Noir seduced eager fans of the finicky grape at the Sta.
Rita Hills winemaker dinner at Palate Food & Wine in Glendale
on Sunday April 3rd. Over 20 different wineries cast their spell
on the crowd, who clamored for more California Pinot, and couldn't
decide which was their favorite.”
Wes Hagen writes about Sta. Rita Hills and the art of Pinot Noir for the LA Times. There are barely a dozen hospitable locations for growing world-class pinot, many in California (Central Coast, North Coast, Monterey County), the Willamette Valley of Oregon, New Zealand (include, if you must, parts of Australia and Tasmania) and, of course, Europe, with isolated exposures in Germany, Alsace, Austria, Switzerland and France (Champagne, Burgundy). A perfect storm of climate and rarefied dirt is required to make a palatable pinot...and to make a profound bottle takes nothing short of a miracle. The miracle of the region’s microclimate, which allows the Santa Rita Hills to produce glorious pinot noir, began about 20 million years ago deep under the Pacific Ocean. During a violent tectonic shift in the Miocene epoch, the Pacific tectonic plate crashed against the North American plate, and mountains rose out of the ocean in a north-south orientation.
And since this is the Food section, Daley recommends “Serve Sta. Rita Hills pinot noir with broiled, mustard-coated chicken thighs, roast beef sandwiches, roasted duck, grilled pork tenderloin, grilled salmon, roast chicken and your Thanksgiving roast turkey.” Steve Heimoff, West Coast Editor for the Wine Enthusiast wrote about Sta. Rita Hills in his blog:
But not every wine region can be special. It’s a law of the universe. In this day and age of marketing, though, wine regions do the most amazing things to promote themselves as special. They form regional associations, charge dues, and hire publicists to, well, publicize their attributes and paint them in the best possible light. Nothing wrong with that. If you’re a wine region and you don’t blow your own horn, you’ve got a problem. Which makes it all the more remarkable when a new wine region comes on the scene and achieves fame even before they have a functioning association and with hardly lifting a finger to promote themselves. I’m talking about the Santa Rita Hills appellation of Santa Barbara County’s Santa Ynez Valley. Sta. Rita Hills (as the name must appear on the label to avoid a conflict of interest with Chile’s Santa Rita Winery) is probably most famous as the main location of the movie Sideways, but that film did not create SRH’s fame. I can’t even recall that the words “Santa Rita Hills” were ever uttered in the movie. (If anyone knows, please tell me.) Besides, wine critics are not about to salivate over a wine region simply because it’s in a movie. No, the critics began praising SRH in the ‘90s, and the pace has simply accelerated in the 2000s. Today, I think it’s safe to say that SRH stands as one of the greatest places in the New World to grow Pinot Noir (and they do a great job at Chardonnay and Syrah and Pinot Gris and perhaps one or two others). And they got there on their own — not with fancy marketing packages and press kits and events with celebrity auctioneers. Not with spin and hype. Not by luring in big spenders with resorts and great restaurants and golf courses. They did it the old-fashioned way: They earned it. (I can still hear John Houseman saying those words.)
Grape Nutz visited the appellation one Fall weekend and took some great photographs. View the essay here. |
Transverse
Transcendence - Los Angeles Times Magazine
Bill
Daley, of the Chicago Tribune, recently profiled our cool
climate appellation in the newspaper’s food section. “With
the Pacific Ocean just 11 miles to the west and, thanks to the
coastline's sharp curve eastward at Point Conception, also nine
miles to the south, Sta. Rita Hills is blessed with a unique climate
that winemakers began to realize would be ideal for France's cooler
weather grapes, notably pinot noir and chardonnay. Coastal fogs
and ocean breezes keep such a lid on the heat that temperatures
rise roughly one degree for every mile you travel east through
the area.”
In California (as everywhere),
wine regions want to be thought of as special. A region that’s
perceived as special can charge more money for their wines, which
in turn lets them invest in their viticulture and enology and make
the wines even better. This is why every wine region in California
is secretly jealous of Napa Valley (not that they’d admit
it).
A pictorial essay of California's newest 'hotbed'
for Pinot Noir