Lompoc Winery Shows Why Santa Barbara’s Not Just About Pinot Noir & Chardonnay
Cooler regions for California wine are usually found along the coast, areas like Lompoc, Santa Maria, Monterey & Alexander Valley. They are considered cool by California standards, home to Pinot Noir & Chardonnay.
In the Santa Rita Hills appellation near Lompoc you’ll find many winemakers creating wine from these grapes. Wines like Gruner Veltliner, Gamay, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir reign supreme in this region where temperatures range from winter lows in the high 40s and summer high temperatures in the low 80s.
Second generation winemaker Bryan Babcock creates his wines in the Lompoc area, pulling grape from other Santa Barbara AVA’s. So while he’s mixing it up with Chardonnays, Piquepoul and Pinot Noir he is also bringing in the likes of warm weather grape, Carignan, Cabernet Franc, Syrah and Petit Verdot.
| ‘Considering the softness of the wines created in the Santa Rita Hills AVA, Babcock creates more full-bodied wines, vino with characteristics similar to Paso Robles, our hometown.’ | “There is so much spectacular fruit out there now, around the county……there’s a cornucopia of different opportunities with different varieties in all these different nooks and crannies and corridors now in Santa Barbara County.” -Bryan Babcock |
Babcock started sourcing different varietals when Pierce’s Disease infected 80 acres of grape planted by his parents, Mona & Walter Babcock. He says, “I [still] have an acre that I call my laboratory. At one point I was farming 80 acres that died from Pierce’s disease. It had other ailments I suppose because some of the blocks were 30-40 years old.”
Creating wine is first and foremost an endeavor of the earth, you’re a farmer first. You plant grape. Nurture the fields. Monitor their growth. Avoid disease. Measure sugar content. Now you harvest. All of this must happen before creating wine. Babcock shed the growing role to focus on his wine making role.
“Before I start replanting any vineyard I’m going to wait until there’s a remedy for Pierce’s disease. I’ve already ripped my vineyards out twice. Thirty Five years ago I started ripping it out because of Phylloxera bugs and because we made mistakes planting grape with our own roots. Now the last 10 years I ripped my vineyards out because of Pierce’s Disease.”
And since there’s no known cure for that disease, he experiments with a single acre of grape remaining. Then he sources grape from around the county, ‘beautiful grape’ as he describes it in an interview.
“There is so much spectacular fruit out there now, around the county……there’s a cornucopia of different opportunities with different varieties in all these different nooks and crannies and corridors now in Santa Barbara County. I’m on a journey to have fun and just exploit this phenomenal situation. I make Carignon, Mencia, Piquepoul, I make Petite Verdot, in conjunction with keeping an eye on the classics like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.”
He goes on, “I’m no longer a medium-sized 25,000 case winery, we’re a 5,000 case winery. I got smaller precisely because I wanted to get back to the craft and master my winemaking. And if I’m confronted with cutting corners because of the size of my winery, that’s not the winemaking I want to do.”
We visited Babcock eight years ago and enjoyed his wines. We were curious about his creations today. Visiting recently we found the same wonderful wine we remember.
What did we taste?
2022 Love Garden Rose of Petit Verdot $28 ✰+
2022 Dream Field Chardonnay $58 ✰+
2022 Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir $48 ✰+
2022 Prisim Multichromatic Red Blend $28 ✰++ 92pts
2021 Opportunity Knocks Carignon $48 ✰+
2021 Bright Fortune Cabernet Franc $48 ✰+
2021 Upper Crust Syrah $58 ✰++ 92pts
2021 Fathom Petit Verdot $58 ✰+
Their expansive barn like tasting room is a cavernous wonderland of hip 60s and 70s music and paraphernalia. There’s plenty to enjoy, plenty of space to lounge and enjoy their tasty wines.
Babcock finishes our discussion about his vineyard’s death. His wife Lisa confronted him, he says, “I was depressed, and she said ‘Hey look, what’s God trying to tell you? Take a deep breath, take a step back and introspect a little bit.’ And she’s right. Because when you have a 25,000 case winery and an 80 acre vineyard you are a slave to it. And our distribution got more and more difficult. So my vineyard died and it liberated me so can go out into other parts of the county and see what’s going on. And what’s going on is this explosion of opportunities.”
These ’opportunities’ let him create tasty wines you should savor while visiting his ecletic winery. You’ll find it on Highway 246 just east of Lompoc, home to Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
Some notes on our wine ranking system.
Bill & Erin Hodge write about California Wine, the estates & winemakers producing them and educational information about Vino. Living in California Wine Country provides a front row seat to the places you want to visit the most here in the Golden State.
– -✰ means -What’s next on your list of wines
-✰ means -Not liking it too much
✰ means -We’ll drink this wine, especially if it’s hosted!
✰+ means -You’ve got our attention and we might buy this wine.
✰+ + means -We’re hooked and we’re going to buy this wine.
When you see -✰/✰+ with a slash, it means we disagree.
