Step into the old horse barn off Highway 246, where the air smells of toasted oak and ripe Grenache, and you find a tasting room run on aloha. Kaena Wine Company is the Santa Ynez Valley label of Mikael Sigouin, a winemaker his peers call the Grenache King, who has spent more than two decades chasing one grape across the limestone hillsides of Ballard Canyon.

The story

Kaena was born in 2001 out of a single obsession. Mikael Sigouin, part Hawaiian and raised on the shores of Oahu, fell hard for Grenache, the warm, generous red grape of the southern Rhone, and decided to build a label around it. He named the winery Kaena, a shortened form of his given name that in Hawaiian carries the meaning of potential for greatness. It was a tall order for a garage-scale operation, but the wines made the case quickly.

By 2006, Wine Spectator had named Sigouin one of the top ten new Rhone producers in the country, and the nickname stuck. Friends, sommeliers, and fellow vintners began calling him the Grenache King, and the title was less hype than shorthand for a man who had decided, against the prevailing Pinot Noir and Chardonnay fashion of Santa Barbara, to stake his name on a single Rhone variety. Kaena stayed small on purpose, a true boutique house producing around 2,000 cases a year, with Grenache at the center of nearly everything.

The tasting room has moved with the years. Kaena first poured for visitors on San Marcos Avenue in Los Olivos in 2011, then relocated to Grand Avenue in 2013. Today the label has made its home at a converted horse ranch and barn on Highway 246 between Solvang and Buellton, a spot the Sigouins simply call The Ranch. It is family run, dog friendly, and steeped in the same Hawaiian warmth that gave the winery its name.

The place

Kaena draws its best fruit from Ballard Canyon, a small American Viticultural Area that sits in the heart of the Santa Ynez Valley in Santa Barbara County. Granted AVA status in 2013, Ballard Canyon covers roughly 7,800 acres in a north-south running corridor, an orientation that funnels Pacific wind and fog up the canyon floor while the higher slopes catch earlier sun. The result is a place built for Rhone grapes.

The soils are the secret. Sandy and clay loam give the canyon good drainage, and in the northern plots there is limestone, the same chalky stone that lends backbone to so many of the world’s great wines. That limestone pushes the vines to grow thicker skins and concentrate their sugars, acids, and tannins, which is exactly what you want in Grenache, a grape that can turn flabby in soil too generous. Add the canyon’s huge diurnal swing, with summer days near 90 degrees and nights that can drop toward 40, and the fruit ripens fully while holding onto the bright acid that keeps the wines alive.

What they grow and make

Grenache is the heart of the house, and Kaena treats it with restraint. Sigouin buys fruit by the acre from Tierra Alta and Larner Vineyards in Ballard Canyon, and also works with La Presa, Camp 4, and Estelle. Tierra Alta, perched on the steep, limestone-laden northeastern shoulder of the canyon, is the primary source for the flagship Grenache bottlings, and the lineup runs deep, from the Tierra Alta Grenache to small-lot reserve and single-clone selections that show how much one vineyard can say through one grape.

In the cellar, Sigouin uses seasoned French oak, barrels that are one to five years old rather than brand new, so the wood frames the fruit instead of masking it. The aim is true varietal character, the high-toned red fruit, the white pepper, the soft and rounded mouthfeel that make Grenache so seductive when it is handled with a light hand. Alongside the reds, Kaena makes a Grenache rose built by soaking the crushed fruit overnight on its skins with a touch of Syrah, plus white wines including Grenache Blanc and Viognier, and a wine called Wai, a name that means fresh water, made to be chilled and poured young. Syrah rounds out the Rhone family, the other variety Ballard Canyon was practically designed to grow.

Visiting

The Ranch is a former horse barn turned tasting room, an easy, unhurried place to settle in with a flight of Grenache and watch the afternoon light move across the Santa Ynez Valley. It sits right on Highway 246, a short drive from downtown Solvang, which makes it a natural stop on a day spent moving between the valley’s tasting rooms.

Food pairing

Grenache is one of the friendliest reds at the table, and Kaena’s bottlings reward thinking about the food. The Tierra Alta Grenache, with its bright red-fruit lift, soft tannin, and whisper of white pepper, is a complementary match for roast lamb with rosemary and garlic, where the wine’s acid cuts the fat and its pepper note echoes the herbs. For the Grenache rose, reach for grilled shrimp or a salty plate of charcuterie, since salt rounds the wine and lifts its fruit. The Grenache Blanc, fuller and a little waxy, sits beautifully next to roast chicken or a richer fish like halibut in butter, richness meeting richness. When you are deciding what to open with dinner tonight, our wine pairing generator can match a Kaena bottle to whatever is on the stove.

To go deeper on the region and the grape, explore the Santa Ynez Valley AVA that holds Ballard Canyon, browse the wider world of Santa Barbara wine, read our guide to California Syrah for the other Rhone variety Kaena grows, and use the wine pairing generator to plan a meal around their wines.

Anyone planning a weekend in the area should also walk Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone, where old warehouses a few blocks from the beach now hold the densest cluster of tasting rooms in the county.