Eat, Drink Santa Barbara Wine Country
By Heather
Irwin
Long before Santa Barbara's wine country hit it big on the
silver screen, or much of anywhere else, Doug Margerum was already
its biggest fan. In the early 1980's his family purchased a beer
and wine store in Santa Barbara that soon housed one Southern
California's most impressive collections of small production
and hard-to-find wines from around the world. But at the heart
of it was a second collection—that of the best wines being made
in Santa Barbara County. Today, that small store, The Wine Cask, (813
Anacapa St., Santa Barbara, California, 800.463.9463, or store.winecask.com )
has the largest collection of Santa Barbara County wines in the
world and is one of the only places you can find multiple vintages
of the same local wines. Turns out a little foresight was a good thing. This year, Santa
Barbara was on the short list of contenders for Wine Enthusiast magazine's
Wine Region of the Year (the Colchagua Valley in Chile won top
honors) and is home to an increasing number of top-tier wineries
and growers in Southern California. Oh, and there was that movie…you
know the one.
Not content to just sell wines (as well as run two restaurants
under the same name); Margerum has recently joined the ranks
of Santa Barbara winemakers. Operating out of just 240 square
feet of space--about the size of a nice hotel room—his winery
is easily the smallest in the county, if not the state. The winery
bottles only a few thousand cases of wine each year, but Margerum's
Rhone-style M5 (in its second vintage) and Syrahs are topping
the must-have lists of the region's wine enthusiasts.
Operating out of his matchbox-sized space located behind the
Brander Vineyards facility in Los Olivos, Margerum calls himself
a “garagiste”, after the small, independent-minded winemakers
of France who use garages and other small spaces to create unique,
handcrafted wines on a micro-scale. Receiving praise from The
Wine Spectator and others for his small production Pinot
Gris, Sauvignon Blanc and M5 blend, Margerum says he's creating
wines on a “human-scale” – bottling a few thousand cases, as
opposed to the hundreds of thousands or even millions of cases
done by larger manufacturers.
Now,
the Wine Cask has come to Wine Country. The new Santa Ynez outpost
is located inside Fess Parker's Wine Country Inn ( 2860 Grand
Ave., Los Olivos, California, 805.688.7788 ) and also features
a casual winebar, Intermezzo. The restaurant features an award-winning
wine list (running some 65-plus pages) and includes Margerum's
own wines.
If you go:
Wine Cask, Santa Barbara: 813 Anacapa St., Santa Barbara,
California, 800.463.9463, or store.winecask.com .
Wine Cask, Los Olivos: 2860 Grand Ave., Los Olivos, California,
805.688.7788 |
