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Richard Sanford, owner and winemaker
Sanford Winery Santa Barbara On California climates and finding his vineyard... 30 years ago it was my prejudice that Pinot Noir was grown in climates that were too warm in California. I decided I would look for an area in California that would be appropriate for Burgundy style wines -- Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, particularly. So I did a lot of research and compared climates in Burgundy and Napa and Sonoma and Monterey and all the different parts of California to see if I could identify some areas that would be conducive to Burgundy style wines. I would be driving up and down the valleys with a thermometer in my car, measuring the temperature differences, and all my friends thought I was completely crazy. I found there was a very interesting geographic anomaly in Santa Barbara County. --It wasn't at that time a winegrowing region, although it had historically been one during the Mission days.-- In Santa Barbara, the mountain range runs east and west, rather than north and south, so it's open to the Pacific Ocean on the west. The winds come off the ocean and moderate the climate, so it's quite cool. I finally located a promising place, and in 1971 planted 110 acres of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay along with some other varieties.
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