Pull off Roblar Avenue near Foxen Canyon and the first thing you notice is the oaks, big valley oaks throwing shade across a property that used to be a horse ranch. Roblar Winery and Vineyards sits on 40 acres of that oak-studded ground in the Santa Ynez Valley, and it is one of the few places in Santa Barbara wine country where the vineyard, a working organic farm, and a full kitchen all share the same view.

The story

For decades this land was about horses, not grapes. It was an equestrian ranch given over to breeding and training, and the name tells you what stood here first: Roblar comes from the Spanish for a grove of oaks, and the oaks are still everywhere, older than any vine on the place. In the late 1990s, as growers began to understand what the Santa Ynez Valley could do, 21 acres of the ranch were turned over to vineyard and the first vines went into the ground.

The chapter that made Roblar what it is today began in 2017, when the Gleason family took the helm. Kevin and Niki Gleason were not new to the valley. In 2004 they had bought a 415-acre cattle ranch along South Refugio Road and planted it as Refugio Ranch Vineyards, so by the time they took on Roblar they had more than a decade of farming the same hills. Roblar became part of Gleason Family Vineyards, a small group of Santa Ynez estates that also includes Refugio Ranch and Buttonwood, all sharing one winemaking hand.

That hand belongs to Max Marshak, who came on as head winemaker in 2020 and now oversees production across the whole portfolio. Marshak found wine the long way around. He worked in construction and commercial fishing and wrote for fly fishing and hunting magazines before he started home-brewing and making wine on a small scale, then landed on the Central Coast in 2012 as a harvest intern at Fess Parker. He has been making Santa Ynez wine ever since.

The place

Roblar farms in the heart of the Santa Ynez Valley, the warm inland heart of Santa Barbara County. The valley runs roughly east to west, and that orientation is the whole secret of the place. The coastal mountains here lie sideways instead of north to south, so they funnel Pacific fog and cool air straight in off the ocean. Mornings open gray and damp, the fog burns back toward the coast by midday, and afternoons turn genuinely hot before the marine air rolls back at dusk. That daily swing from cool to warm and back is what lets the grapes ripen fully while holding onto their acid.

Roblar sits on the warmer, more inland side of the valley, near Foxen Canyon, where the heat favors Bordeaux reds and Rhone varieties that need real sun to ripen. The soils across the property are the sandy, gravelly loams that horses once ran on, well drained ground that suits vines looking to dig deep. The cooler grapes, the ones that want fog more than sun, come from elsewhere.

What they grow and make

The estate vineyard leans Bordeaux. The reds planted here are Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Petit Verdot, the classic Left Bank grouping, along with blocks of Sangiovese, Syrah, Grenache, and Graciano. It is a warm-site lineup, built for wines with real depth and structure rather than delicacy, and it reflects exactly what this corner of the valley does best.

For the grapes that want a colder home, Roblar looks west. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are sourced from vineyards in the neighboring Sta. Rita Hills, the fog-soaked AVA closer to the coast where those two grapes thrive. The white program also reaches for aromatic and Italian varieties, with Sauvignon Blanc and Malvasia Bianca among the wines that come out of the Gleason cellar.

The range, then, runs wide on purpose. A crisp, herb-edged Sauvignon Blanc for a warm afternoon. A floral Malvasia Bianca that drinks like sunshine. Cool-climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from the hills to the west. And the heart of the estate, the Bordeaux reds and Rhone varieties that carry the warmth of this inland ground in the glass.

Farming

The most distinctive thing at Roblar is not a wine at all. It is the farm. In 2018 the Gleasons planted Roblar Farm, a five-acre organic produce farm next door to the winery, and it now grows more than 40 varieties of vegetables, herbs, and flowers. The kitchen harvests off it weekly, which means the menu changes with what the ground gives. It is a genuine farm-to-table operation, not a slogan, and it sits at the center of how Roblar thinks about hospitality.

Visiting

Roblar runs a full-service restaurant and tasting room together, pouring estate wines alongside a menu built from the farm next door. It is one of the more complete experiences in the valley, a place you can settle into for a long lunch rather than a quick flight.

Food pairing

Roblar is built for the table, so this is where its wines come alive. Pour the Sauvignon Blanc against a plate of goat cheese or a salad pulled straight from the farm. It works because the wine and the cheese share the same green, grassy compounds, so they read as one bright flavor, and the wine’s acid keeps everything fresh. Move to the estate Cabernet Sauvignon and you want fat and protein on the plate. Tannin binds to the proteins in a well-marbled steak, so the wine turns rounder and softer while the meat tastes cleaner and less rich. That is chemistry, not romance.

The Sangiovese and Syrah belong with the smoke and char of the kitchen’s grilled dishes and anything built on tomato, olive oil, and herbs, the savory Mediterranean table these grapes were bred for. With the on-site restaurant changing its menu around the weekly harvest, the smartest move is to taste, then let the kitchen pour the pairing for you. If you want to build a meal around a bottle before you go, our wine pairing generator will match a Roblar wine to whatever you are cooking.

Roblar is one good stop on a longer day. Read more about the wider Santa Ynez Valley and the rest of Santa Barbara wine country, dig into the grapes the estate grows in our guides to Sauvignon Blanc and California Cabernet Sauvignon, and use the wine pairing generator to plan the meal.

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.