Find the row of roll-up doors in the Lompoc Wine Ghetto, the unglamorous warehouse district where some of the Sta. Rita Hills’ most serious wine gets made, and look for the one with two women behind the bar pouring cool-climate Syrah and Gruner Veltliner. This is Camins 2 Dreams, the label Tara Gomez and Mireia Taribo Tena built together after a friendship became a marriage and a marriage became a winery. The name means paths to dreams, and the wines taste exactly like two people chasing one.

The story

Tara Gomez grew up in the Santa Ynez Valley as a member of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, and she figured out early that wine was chemistry she could fall in love with. A childhood chemistry set turned into a degree in enology from California State University, Fresno, where in 1998 she was one of only two women in her graduating class, helped there by a scholarship from her tribe. She learned the trade the long way, with years as an enologist at Fess Parker, nearly a decade in the lab at J. Lohr, and then two harvests at Castell d’Encus high in the Spanish Pyrenees, where she blended Old World patience with the New World instincts she had grown up with. When her tribe bought the Camp 4 vineyard in 2010, she came home to make wine for them at Kita, becoming the first recognized Native American winemaker to craft wine for her own tribe from land the tribe owns.

Mireia Taribo Tena came from the other side of the world with the same obsession. Born in Catalunya, in northeastern Spain, she trained as a winemaker in a country where wine is woven into daily life. The two of them first crossed paths in 2006 through the wine industry, and what began as a friendship built on shared work and shared travels slowly became something more. They fell in love over wine, and they decided to make it together.

In 2017 they launched Camins 2 Dreams, retiring an earlier personal label of Tara’s to start fresh as a couple and a team. The winery is small and deliberately so. Everything runs through their four hands, from the vineyard relationships to the fermentations to the pour at the bar. It is one of the most personal projects in Santa Barbara County wine, a marriage you can taste, and a rare and welcome thing in an industry that has not always made room for two women, one of them Indigenous, one of them an immigrant, doing it entirely on their own terms.

The place

Camins 2 Dreams is anchored in the Sta. Rita Hills, the cool, wind-raked appellation in the western reaches of the Santa Ynez Valley that ranks among the most dramatic cool-climate terroirs in California. The secret here is geography. The coastal mountains of Santa Barbara County run east to west rather than north to south, an unusual transverse orientation that throws the valleys open to the Pacific like a funnel. Cold ocean air and morning fog pour straight inland off the water, settling over the vines overnight and burning off slowly through the day. That daily swing from sweater-cool dawns to bright afternoons is what keeps the grapes hanging long and holding onto their acid, and it is the entire reason these wines taste alive rather than heavy.

The soils underneath tell the same cool-climate story. The Sta. Rita Hills is a patchwork of ancient marine sediment, sand, and diatomaceous earth, the chalky remains of a seabed that lifted out of the ocean. Those lean, well-drained soils stress the vines just enough to concentrate flavor without piling on weight. Tara and Mireia source from organically and biodynamically farmed sites here and just beyond, including Spear Vineyard, planted in 2014 with some of the highest-elevation Syrah in the appellation at close to 900 feet, and Zotovich Vineyard, where blocks of Syrah and Grenache went into the ground in 2012. The fruit comes from a small handful of growers they trust, all of whom farm the way they believe in.

What they grow and make

Camins 2 Dreams is, at heart, a cool-climate Syrah and Gruner Veltliner house, which is an unusual and telling pair. Both grapes reward a cold site and a light hand, and both are wines built for the table rather than the trophy shelf. The Syrahs are the signature, made from high-elevation, fog-fed fruit and bottled by single vineyard so the differences in place come through. The Spear and Zotovich Syrahs lean savory and peppery, with the dark fruit kept taut by acidity instead of drowned in oak, the kind of red that smells of crushed black fruit, smoke, and wild herbs.

The Gruner Veltliner is the surprise that wins people over at the bar, a bright, white-peppery, citrus-and-stone white with the kind of zip that makes you reach for food. Around those two anchors, Tara and Mireia work a wider Old World and New World palette, including cool-climate Grenache, Graciano, Carignan, Gamay, and Albarino, grapes that nod to her time in Spain and to Mireia’s Catalan roots. The wine that ties it all together is Yila, a field-spirited red blend whose name means all, or every, in Samala, the Chumash language. Each vintage Yila pulls from all the grapes they work with, every variety adding something to the whole, a bottle that is essentially a self-portrait of the winery in a single glass.

Farming

The farming is the point, not a footnote. Camins 2 Dreams works exclusively with organic, biodynamic, and regenerative vineyards across San Benito and Santa Barbara counties, with the focus on the Sta. Rita Hills, and every grower they partner with shares a deep respect for the land and for the people who work it. That last part matters to them as much as the soil. In the cellar, the philosophy is minimal intervention. The wines ferment with native yeast and see only low levels of added sulfur, the approach of winemakers who trust good fruit to speak for itself rather than correcting it into a house style. It is honest, low-additive winemaking, and it is why their bottles sit comfortably alongside the natural-wine producers of the world while still tasting precise and complete.

Visiting

You taste Camins 2 Dreams where the wine is made, in the Lompoc Wine Ghetto, an unassuming cluster of warehouses east of town that has quietly become one of the best places in the country to taste Sta. Rita Hills wine straight from the source. There is no estate, no fountain, no gift shop, just a working space, a friendly bar, and very often Tara or Mireia themselves pouring and talking through the wines. The tasting is small and personal, typically five pours, and the fee is waived with a three-bottle purchase. Reservations are recommended, with walk-ins welcomed when there is room. Because hours in the Ghetto can shift by season and by harvest, it is worth confirming the current schedule by phone or on the official site before you make the drive.

Food pairing

These are food wines through and through, made by two people who clearly love to eat. The cool-climate Syrah, all black pepper, smoke, and bright dark fruit, is built for a charcoal grill. Pour it with lamb chops, grilled sausages, or a peppered hanger steak, where the wine’s tannin grabs onto the protein and fat and turns rounder while the meat tastes less heavy, a textbook complementary match between a savory red and a savory plate. The Gruner Veltliner pulls the opposite lever. Its high acid and white-pepper bite slice through richness, so it shines against schnitzel, a herby green salad, roast chicken with lemon, or anything fried, where the acid scrubs the palate clean and makes you want the next bite. Reach for the Grenache or the Yila blend with roast pork or a tomato-rich braise, and pour the Albarino with shellfish, the way they do all along the Spanish coast Mireia knows by heart. For a match tuned to one specific bottle and one specific dinner, our wine pairing generator will point you to the right plate.

To go deeper, explore the Sta. Rita Hills AVA that gives these wines their cool-climate spine, browse the wider world of Santa Barbara wine, read up on the cool, fog-fed Santa Ynez Valley that surrounds it, and when you are ready to plan a dinner around a bottle, let the wine pairing generator do the matching for you.

If a tasting trip is on the calendar, the Funk Zone in Santa Barbara packs more than a dozen tasting rooms into a few walkable blocks near the waterfront, which makes it the easiest way to try wines from across the county in a single afternoon.