The winery is named Amada, the Spanish word for beloved, and also the name of the grandmother who refused to let a good thing slip away. When Ramon Guerrero left for college in frigid Minnesota, certain his romance with a Santa Barbara sophomore named Sandra was finished, it was her grandmother Amada who kept mailing him baked goods and kept reminding Sandra that this one was a keeper. More than forty-five years later, Ramon and Sandra are married, back in Santa Barbara County, and pouring wine off their own land under that grandmother name. Every bottle, as Ramon likes to say, is crafted with love.

A doctor, a dancer, and a forty-five-year love story

Both Guerreros were born in Mexico, Ramon in Guadalajara and Sandra in Juarez, and both arrived in the Santa Barbara area by junior high. He graduated from Santa Barbara High, she from Dos Pueblos two years later. Ramon grew up in the old trailer park at the freeway end of Salinas Street, where his father worked as a gardener for the grand estates of Montecito and was once named the town top landscaper. The boy loved helping with the plants. He also loved science, won a tri-county science fair, and earned a scholarship to Carleton College, then went on to medical school at UC Davis. That is where the couple first went wine tasting, talked into it by a friend who promised it was free if they brought a picnic. Leaning into Sandra at Sequoia Grove, Ramon asked whether it might be nice to do something like this one day. She told him to concentrate on his career.

That career, in anesthesiology, took them to Plano outside Dallas from 1993 to 2019, where they raised two sons and a daughter and never stopped missing the coast. In 2002 they bought a flat seventeen-acre lot near the Santa Ynez River. Ramon floated the idea of planting a vineyard, and Sandra told him he was loco. With help from Salvador Bernal, the vineyard manager at Sunstone Winery who offered his services for free, they put four acres of syrah in the ground that same year. Those grapes became Meadowlark Vineyards, the family original label, most of it sold in Texas. Only recently did they launch Amada to carry their heritage, opening a tasting room on a prominent corner in the little town of Los Alamos.

Warm river ground in the north county

This is the warmer, sunnier side of Santa Barbara wine country. The vineyard sits on flat land beside the Santa Ynez River, far enough inland that the afternoons get genuinely hot, which is exactly what Rhone and Bordeaux grapes want. The transverse mountains still do their work at night, funneling cool Pacific air and fog up the valleys after dark, so the fruit ripens in the heat of the day and then holds onto its acid as the temperature drops. That swing is what keeps these wines lively instead of heavy.

The planting has evolved with the family. Over the years they grafted much of the original syrah over to grenache and cabernet sauvignon, keeping just enough sauvignon blanc to make a single barrel each year. The logo tells you the rest of the story. It is a dahlia, the national flower of Mexico, with a heart at its center. As Ramon explains it: “Amada means beloved in Spanish. Our logo represents a dahlia. The dahlia is the national flower of Mexico, and this symbol connects us to our Mexican heritage. At the core of the dahlia is a heart.”

The wines, and a cake pop you did not see coming

Syrah is the founding grape and still the heart of the lineup, joined by grenache, cabernet sauvignon, and that tiny run of sauvignon blanc, poured under both the Amada and Meadowlark labels. These are warm-country reds with dark fruit, pepper, and enough structure for the dinner table, built by people who clearly drink with food. The sauvignon blanc is the bright, citrusy counterpoint, a single barrel made more for love than for volume.

Then there is the surprise on the counter: Amada Wine Pearls, golf-ball sized cake pops made with wine, plus non-alcoholic versions for everyone else. They were developed with family friend Monica Robles, a pastry chef the Guerreros affectionately call the Mexican Mary Poppins, after she brought cake pops to a family baptism. The family trademarked them. It is the kind of warm, slightly unexpected touch that tells you this is a home as much as a business.

What to pour it with

Start with the syrah and grenache, because these are grill wines through and through. Syrah loves char, pepper, and fat, which is pure chemistry: its firm tannins bind to the protein and fat in the meat, so the wine tastes rounder and the meat tastes cleaner. Pour it with carne asada, grilled lamb, or a plate of mole, the kind of food this family actually gathers around. The grenache, softer and red-fruited, is the one for a Sunday pot of beans and braised pork. Save the cabernet sauvignon for a charred ribeye, where the big tannins finally meet a steak worthy of them.

The lone sauvignon blanc is your aperitif and your seafood wine. Its high acid slices through richness and fried food, and it has a real bridge to goat cheese, since both carry the same green, grassy compounds and read as one flavor on the palate. Pour it with ceviche, a citrus salad, or fresh oysters. The one thing to avoid is putting that peppery syrah next to a delicate white fish, where the tannin has nothing to grab and turns hard and metallic.

Amada Cellars: common questions