Walk into the corner unit at the Lompoc Wine Ghetto on a fog-cool morning and you will find Norm Yost pouring Pinot Noir and hand-riddled bubbles named after a pair of pygmy goats. Flying Goat Cellars is a small, single-minded house built on one idea, that vineyard-designated Pinot Noir and traditional-method sparkling from the Sta. Rita Hills and Santa Maria Valley deserve a maker who fusses over every cluster. It is one of the most personal tasting experiences in Santa Barbara County wine.

The story

Norm Yost spent the better part of two decades learning his craft the long way, making wine in Napa, Sonoma, Oregon and Australia before the cool Pacific edge of Santa Barbara County finally caught him. He landed here in 1998 to take over winemaking at a Lompoc estate, and two years later, in 2000, he struck out on his own with four tons of Pinot Noir and a label named for the two animals asleep in his yard.

Those animals were pygmy goats called Never and Epernay, named with a wink for the great wine towns of France. They were lawnmowers, pets and comic relief, and Yost gave the winery their wings. Flying Goat Cellars has stayed deliberately small ever since, producing only a couple thousand cases a year so that Yost can keep his hands on the work. In 2005 he added a sparkling program made in the traditional method, and the first release helped him court Kate Griffith, who he married in 2010 and who brought the marketing and communications side of the house with her.

In 2025 the winery marked its 25th anniversary, and the Sta. Rita Hills Wine Alliance named Yost its Vintner of the Year, a nod from his own neighbors to the patient, vineyard-first approach. After 25 harvests under one roof, Flying Goat reads less like a brand and more like a life’s work.

The place

Flying Goat draws its Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris from two of the coolest growing regions in California, the Sta. Rita Hills and the Santa Maria Valley. Both owe their character to a geological accident. The mountain ranges here run east to west rather than north to south, a transverse orientation rare on the entire Pacific Coast, and that alignment opens the valleys like a funnel to the ocean.

Cold Pacific air and morning fog pour straight inland through that gap, filling the hills in the late night and early hours and burning off slowly by midday. The result is one of the coolest summer climates in California wine country, cooler than Carneros or the Russian River, with a long, unhurried growing season that lets the grapes hold their acid while they ripen. Under the vines lie marine-based soils, sandy and silty loams laced with limestone and old seabed, the kind of poor, calcium-rich ground that gives Pinot Noir its bright, mineral edge.

It is, in short, a love match between grape and ground. Pinot Noir is famously thin-skinned and temperamental, and this fog-fed corridor gives it exactly the cool nights and slow days it craves.

What they grow and make

Flying Goat is built around vineyard-designated Pinot Noir, meaning each bottling comes from a single, named site so the wine can speak in that vineyard’s accent. Yost works with celebrated Sta. Rita Hills sites including Rancho Santa Rosa and Rio Vista, drawing on different clones and microblocks to give each wine its own frame. These are cool-climate Pinots in the truest sense, built on red and dark fruit, savory spice and the firm, food-friendly structure that the fog and the marine soils hand them.

Alongside the still wines, Yost makes vineyard-designated Pinot Gris, a richer, more textural white than most American versions of the grape, and the wines that have become the winery’s calling card, Goat Bubbles. These are methode champenoise sparkling wines made entirely in-house, where every bottle is hand-riddled, disgorged, waxed and labeled. The Goat Bubbles range runs across Rose, Blanc de Blancs, Blanc de Noirs, Cremant, Brut Cuvee and a Pinot Meunier, with the Rose sourced from Santa Maria Valley fruit since the program’s first vintage in 2005.

Tasting through the lineup is the best way to understand the place. The same cool corridor that gives the Pinot Noir its lift gives the sparkling wines their racy, mouthwatering acidity, the spine that makes good bubbles feel alive rather than soft.

Farming

Flying Goat is a negociant-style house in the best sense, buying fruit from some of the most respected vineyards in the Sta. Rita Hills and Santa Maria Valley rather than farming a single estate. Yost chooses sites for their specific clones, soils and exposures, which is why the wines carry vineyard names on the label, and the sparkling wines are made start to finish at his own Lompoc facility.

Visiting

The tasting room sits in the Lompoc Wine Ghetto, an unglamorous cluster of warehouse units on the east side of town that has quietly become one of the most rewarding places to taste in the county. There is no manicured estate here, just working wineries and the people who make the wine, often pouring it themselves. That informality is the point. You come to the Ghetto to taste seriously and talk shop, not to pose, and Flying Goat is one of its anchors.

Food pairing

Flying Goat’s wines were built for the table, and the cool-climate structure tells you exactly where to point them. The vineyard-designated Pinot Noir, with its bright acid, fine tannin and savory red fruit, is a natural with seared duck breast and a cherry pan sauce, where the wine’s own dark-cherry note bridges the dish and its acid cuts the richness of the fat. Roasted mushrooms, grilled salmon or a herb-roasted chicken all work for the same reason, the wine has enough lift to keep the plate feeling fresh.

The Goat Bubbles are where the fun starts. A traditional-method sparkling wine is one of the great pairing tools in the kitchen, because its acidity and fine bubbles scrub fat and salt off the palate and reset it for the next bite. Pour the Brut Cuvee or Blanc de Blancs with fried chicken, salty oysters or a platter of charcuterie, and the contrast does the work. The Rose, with a touch more red fruit, loves grilled prawns and anything off the summer fire. For more ideas matched to your own menu, run the dish through our wine pairing generator.

To go deeper on the region and the grape, explore the Sta. Rita Hills AVA and the wider Santa Barbara wine country, read our guide to California Pinot Noir, and let the wine pairing generator match Flying Goat’s wines to your table.

For a tasting day that needs no designated driver, the Funk Zone urban wine trail gathers dozens of Santa Barbara County producers into a walkable grid of converted warehouses near the harbor.