In the cobblestone courtyard of El Paseo, just off State Street in downtown Santa Barbara, you find an unlikely pairing: a flute of cold, traditional-method sparkling wine and a hand-cut wooden jigsaw puzzle on the table. That is LouBud, the small sparkling house Laura Hughes built from the cool, fog-fed vineyards of the Sta. Rita Hills, out to prove this corner of California can make serious bubbles the way Champagne does.

The story

Laura Hughes did not arrive in Santa Barbara to make sparkling wine. She came in 2012 to chase Pinot Noir, taking a job at the historic Sanford Winery, one of the founding addresses of California cool-climate viticulture. What she found surprised her: a region with the long, cool growing season sparkling wine craves, and almost no one making it. That gap became the idea behind LouBud, which she launched with the 2015 vintage after friends pushed her to put her own name on a bottle.

The name is pure family. Loubud comes from Loubudillia, a childhood nickname her father gave her, and that personal thread runs through everything the brand does. Hughes trained in viticulture and enology at UC Davis and worked harvests across the wine world, in Burgundy, Tasmania, Napa, and South Africa. She rose to associate winemaker at Sanford, a role that gives her access to the coveted fruit of the historic Sanford and Benedict Vineyard, and a mentor in Michael Benedict, the man who first planted those vines and has championed her LouBud project for years.

In 2023 her husband Paul joined the adventure, and with him came a second craft. Paul hand-carves custom wooden jigsaw puzzles, and the idea of bubbles and puzzles became the signature of the LouBud experience. When the couple opened their downtown tasting room in late 2024, they built it around exactly that: a glass of sparkling in one hand, a puzzle piece in the other. As Hughes put it when she finally poured her wine under her own roof, this was full circle, a chance to put Sanford and Benedict on the label as her own.

The place

LouBud is a creature of the Sta. Rita Hills, the small, cool AVA at the western edge of Santa Barbara County where the mountain ranges run east to west, opening the valley like a funnel to the Pacific. Marine fog pours straight inland off the ocean, settling over the vines at night and burning off slowly through the morning. That daily swing gives the grapes one of the longest hang times in California, so they ripen slowly while holding the bright acidity that is the whole secret of good sparkling wine.

Hughes is sharp about why this matters. The climate fools visitors, she has said, because they expect warm, sunny days morning to night, when in truth the cooler hang allows for fuller expression of the fruit while keeping the acidity. That acidity is the spine of a traditional-method wine. Pick too ripe and the bubbles go flat and broad. Pick from a cool, fog-washed site like the Sta. Rita Hills and you get the tension and lift that makes the style sing.

What they grow and make

LouBud is a sparkling house first and last, made entirely in the traditional method, the same second-fermentation-in-bottle process used in Champagne. She works with a handful of trusted cool-climate sites, chief among them the legendary Sanford and Benedict Vineyard in the Sta. Rita Hills and Cebada Vineyard in the ocean-facing reaches near Lompoc, farmed by Sandra Newman, the grower who helped her get her very first wine off the ground.

The range is built around the two great Champagne grapes, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The vineyard-designated Blanc de Blancs from Sanford and Benedict is all Chardonnay, taut and chalky and precise, a wine that earned 90 points from Wine Enthusiast in its 2021 vintage. The Blanc de Noirs, made from Pinot Noir off Cebada, is richer and more textured, the 2021 earning 94 points. Alongside them sit a Brut Rose and a still Rose of Pinot Noir, a nod to the first LouBud vintage in 2015, which paired a Blanc de Noirs with a still rose. These are small-production wines, made by one person who eats, sleeps, and breathes the work, with, in her own words, not a lot of pomp and circumstance.

Visiting

You will not find LouBud at a vineyard estate. The tasting room sits in the historic El Paseo courtyard in the heart of downtown Santa Barbara, a cobblestone passage off State Street between De La Guerra and Anacapa, across from the Happy Canyon Vineyards room. It is an intimate space, with seating for around 32 split between an interior room and a patio, and it doubles as Paul Hughes’ puzzle workshop. The pour is sparkling and rose, served slow and personal. Seating is limited, so reservations are recommended, and parties of six or more are best arranged ahead by email.

Food pairing

Traditional-method sparkling wine is one of the most food-friendly pours on earth, and LouBud’s bottlings prove it. The high acidity and fine bubbles do real work on the palate, slicing through fat and resetting your tongue for the next bite. That is why sparkling and fried food is physics, not a gimmick. Pour the chalky Blanc de Blancs alongside oysters, fried chicken, or salty popcorn and the acid scrubs the richness clean. The richer, Pinot-driven Blanc de Noirs has the body for seared scallops, risotto, or roast chicken, depth meeting depth. The Brut Rose loves anything off the grill or a board of charcuterie, its berry lift playing against smoke and salt. For a tailored match to a specific bottle, our wine pairing generator will point you to the right plate.

Go deeper in the Sta. Rita Hills AVA that gives these wines their cool-climate spine, the wider world of Santa Barbara wine, and our guides to California Pinot Noir and California Chardonnay, the two grapes at the heart of every LouBud bottle. When you are ready to plan a meal around the bubbles, the wine pairing generator does the matching for you.