Pick up a pen and shade a drawing with crosshatching and the magic is in the overlap, two sets of lines crossing until something with depth appears where there was only flat paper. CrossHatch Winery makes wine the same way. Every bottle is a co-ferment, two or more grape varieties picked on the same morning, crushed together, and fermented as one, so the wine that emerges tastes like something neither grape could become alone. It is one of the most distinctive small labels in Santa Barbara County, a women-owned house of barely a thousand cases a year that pours in a downtown Santa Barbara tasting room on the Urban Wine Trail.

The story

CrossHatch began in 2011 as a winemaker’s itch to do something different. Ryan Carr had spent more than a decade making single-variety wines under his own Carr label, having arrived in the Santa Ynez Valley with an art degree from the University of Arizona and started, like so many here, on his knees in the vineyard pruning vines. By the mid-1990s he was making wine at Central Coast Wine Services in Santa Maria, learning the county’s vineyards block by block. After eleven years of bottling one grape at a time, he wanted to chase a different idea, and his wife Jessica helped him land on the name. Crosshatching is the drawing technique where closely spaced sets of lines cross to build shading and form, and that became the whole philosophy: harvest different varieties on the same day, ferment them together, and let the intersection create flavors that would never exist if each grape were vinified alone.

The project changed hands in 2023 when Michelle Vautier came on as owner. Born and raised in Buenos Aires, where wine was simply part of the table, Vautier spent a successful career in financial technology before the pull toward land and community won out. She moved into the wine industry in 2020 and took the reins of CrossHatch with a clear sense of what she wanted, a label grounded in the dirt and built around people. Ryan Carr stayed on as head winemaker and has been training her in the craft, so the wines keep their founding character while she steers their future.

That future is getting bigger. In 2025, Vautier acquired a 40-acre property called Imagine Family Farm on Dover Canyon Road in Templeton, up in the York Mountain country at the western edge of Paso Robles, with plans to plant about five acres of estate vines and turn the farm into a gathering place for the wine club, with winemaker dinners, educational events, and immersive tastings among the apple and peach trees, the chickens, and the bees. For a label that has always sourced its fruit, putting roots in estate ground is a real turn in the story.

The place

CrossHatch is a Santa Barbara County winery in the truest sense, drawing fruit from vineyards spread across the county rather than from a single estate block. That breadth is the point. The county is one of the most climatically dramatic growing regions in California, shaped by a quirk of geology: its mountain ranges run east to west, the transverse ranges, which open the valleys like funnels straight to the Pacific. Cool ocean air and fog pour inland off the water, settling over the vines at night and burning off slowly through the morning, so the same valley can be sunbaked at noon and sweater-cool by dusk. That daily swing is why Santa Barbara fruit keeps its acid and the wines taste alive. To go deeper on the region and its AVAs, explore the wider world of Santa Barbara wine.

Sourcing across the county lets CrossHatch match each grape to the ground that suits it best, then bring those lots together at the crush pad. Cool coastal sites give the Pinot Noir and the white grapes their nerve and lift, while warmer inland benches ripen the Rhone and Mediterranean varieties, the Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre, and Tempranillo, that anchor the reds. Co-fermentation is the thread that ties this geographic patchwork into a single glass, because the wines are built from the diversity of the whole county rather than the signature of one site.

What they grow and make

Every CrossHatch wine is a co-ferment, and the lineup reads like a set of small experiments that worked. On the white side, Patina marries Viognier and Grenache Blanc, the Viognier bringing stone fruit and perfume while the Grenache Blanc keeps it taut and savory. Tone crosses Chardonnay with Sauvignon Blanc, a blend of richness and cut you rarely see done as a single ferment, the Chardonnay lending texture and the Sauvignon Blanc lending green, citrus snap. Among the reds, Shape and Rubia both lean on Grenache rounded out with Mourvedre, juicy and warm with a savory backbone. Shading layers Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre into a classic Rhone-style trio. Congruence is mostly Syrah with a touch of Viognier co-fermented in, the old Cote-Rotie trick where a splash of the aromatic white lifts the dark fruit and softens the wine. Figure goes its own way with Tempranillo, Grenache, and Cabernet Sauvignon, and Unveil pairs Pinot Noir with a whisper of Syrah for a brighter, red-fruited style.

What unites them is the method, not a house formula. Some of the oldest and most celebrated wines in the world were made by co-fermenting whatever ripened together, and CrossHatch revives that old-world instinct on a tiny modern scale, six or so wines a vintage, roughly a thousand cases total. These are wines made to be tasted side by side, where the fun is comparing how two grapes behave when they ferment as one.

Visiting

CrossHatch recently moved its home to downtown Santa Barbara, opening a tasting room at 111 East Haley Street in the Haley corridor, an easy stroll from the Funk Zone and the city’s Urban Wine Trail. It is a small, personal room built around the wine and the people pouring it, where you can taste through the co-ferment lineup, order wines by the glass, or settle in with a bottle. Because the label is so small and the wines so specific, it rewards a slow visit and a few questions across the bar. Hours can shift, so it is worth confirming the current schedule by phone or on the official site before you go.

Food pairing

Co-ferments are some of the most food-friendly wines you can pour, because the blending builds in both fruit and savory complexity. Reach for Patina, the Viognier and Grenache Blanc white, with roast chicken and lemon or with a creamy goat cheese, where its acidity slices through the richness and resets your palate for the next bite. Tone, the Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, loves grilled white fish and herb-forward salads, the Sauvignon Blanc side bridging directly to anything green. On the reds, the Grenache-led Shape and Rubia want grilled lamb, sausages, or a tomato-rich braise, where the wine’s juicy fruit and warm spice meet the char and the salt. Congruence, the Syrah with a splash of Viognier, is your bottle for short ribs or anything off the smoker, its dark fruit and pepper standing up to fat and fire. Unveil, the brighter Pinot Noir blend, is happiest with seared duck breast, mushroom risotto, or grilled salmon, where its earthy, red-fruited side echoes the umami on the plate. If you want a tailored match for a specific bottle and a specific dinner, our wine pairing generator will point you to the right plate.

To put these wines in context, explore the wider world of Santa Barbara wine that grows the fruit, and read our guide to California Pinot Noir, the cool-climate grape behind the Unveil bottling. When you are ready to plan a dinner around a bottle, the wine pairing generator does the matching for you.