Drive up Ballard Canyon Road outside Solvang until the pavement narrows and the oaks close in overhead, and you arrive at Rusack Vineyards, a 48 acre estate where the tasting deck sits under a canopy of ancient oaks above a working vineyard. Founded in 1995 by Geoff Rusack and Alison Wrigley Rusack, it is one of the rare California wineries with a sister vineyard out on Santa Catalina Island, and one of the calmest, most beautiful places to taste in the Santa Ynez Valley.

The story

Geoff Rusack and Alison Wrigley Rusack met on a blind date and, somewhere along the way, started talking about the kind of dream most couples only talk about. They wanted to grow grapes and make wine together. When a property came up for sale in Ballard Canyon, a quiet fold of hills between Solvang and Los Olivos, they bought it, moved their young family into a house on the vineyard land, and committed to the long patient work of turning a piece of ground into a winery.

That was 1995. By 1997 the tasting room had opened to the public, and the place has grown into one of the most respected small estates in Santa Barbara County. Alison carries a remarkable piece of California history in her own family tree. Her great grandfather was William Wrigley Jr., the chewing gum magnate whose company once owned most of Santa Catalina Island. The bulk of the island was long ago deeded to the Catalina Island Conservancy, but the family kept a few parcels, and that detail would eventually give Rusack a vineyard unlike any other in the state.

In 2003 Steve Gerbac joined the estate as a production assistant. He had learned his craft at Whitcraft Winery in Santa Barbara and at Brander in Los Olivos, and he worked his way up over a decade until he was named winemaker in 2012. He has guided the cellar ever since, and his fingerprints are all over the estate Syrah and the careful, site by site Chardonnay program that built the reputation.

The place

Ballard Canyon became its own federally recognized sub appellation within the larger Santa Ynez Valley in 2013, and it is one of the most distinctive pockets of Santa Barbara wine country. The canyon runs north to south, which shelters it from the worst of the coastal fog while still catching the cool evening air that funnels inland through the transverse mountain ranges. The result is warm, sun soaked afternoons that ripen Rhone grapes beautifully, followed by cold nights that lock in acid and freshness. It is Syrah country, and Ballard Canyon has quietly become one of the finest addresses for the grape in California.

Visitors short on time often start at the Funk Zone, the walkable warehouse district near the Santa Barbara waterfront where a large share of the county’s producers keep a tasting room.

The Rusack estate sits on roughly 48 acres of oak studded rolling hills, with the vineyard blocks replanted in 2003 using modern spacing and clonal selections chosen to suit the canyon floor and the slopes that climb away from the creek. The soils here are sandy and loamy over the old valley substrate, draining well and pushing the vines to work for their fruit. You feel the place the moment you step onto the deck. The light goes gold across the vines in late afternoon, the oaks throw long shadows, and the canyon holds its quiet.

What they grow and make

Syrah is the heart of the estate. It accounts for a large share of the planted acres in the canyon, and Rusack sits among the most respected Syrah producers in Santa Barbara County. The estate bottling is dark and savory, full of blackberry, cracked pepper, and a meaty depth that comes from warm days and cold nights, the kind of red built for a fire and a long dinner.

The Chardonnay program is the other signature, and it is unusually thoughtful. Gerbac makes several distinct Chardonnays in a given vintage, drawing on cool climate fruit from the Sta. Rita Hills and Santa Maria Valley to the west, where fog and Pacific air keep the grapes bright and mineral. These are Burgundian in spirit, balancing orchard fruit and citrus against a measured hand of oak. The estate also grows Sangiovese, the great red grape of Tuscany, which thrives in the canyon warmth and gives a bright, food loving wine that nods to the family table.

Rusack makes California Pinot Noir as well, sourced from the same cool western appellations that feed the Chardonnay, along with a Bordeaux style blend called Anacapa, a Sauvignon Blanc, and a rotating set of small experimental lots that the team plays with each harvest. Then there are the island wines. In 2007 the Rusacks planted a five acre vineyard at the old Rancho Escondido site on the west end of Catalina, about two and a half acres of Chardonnay and two acres of Pinot Noir. Farming a vineyard on an island twenty six miles out to sea is its own kind of madness, with bison and fog and the long boat ride for every piece of equipment, but the Catalina bottlings have become a beloved rarity, possibly the only commercially produced island grown wines in California.

Farming

Rusack farms its estate fruit in Ballard Canyon and supplements with carefully chosen vineyards in the cooler western appellations of the county for the Pinot Noir and much of the Chardonnay. The 2003 replant gave the team a chance to match grape to ground block by block, and the small scale of the operation lets them work by hand and by feel rather than by formula. The Catalina vineyard is the purest expression of that hands on philosophy, an estate so remote that every vintage is an act of devotion.

Visiting

The tasting space is called the Canyon Terrace, reopened in early 2022 after a full renovation. You arrive to a splash of something seasonal at the entry, then settle in on the al fresco deck under those ancient oaks, with a customizable menu of flights, by the glass pours, and bottles to work through while the view of the estate vines and the Santa Ynez hills does the rest. Visits are by appointment, so book ahead.

Food pairing

The estate Syrah wants fat and char. Pour it with a grilled ribeye or lamb chops off the fire, where the wine tannin binds to the protein and softens, the meat tastes less heavy, and the peppery savory notes in the glass meet the char on the plate. That is a complementary match doing real work on the tongue. The Sangiovese is built for the Italian table, its bright acid slicing through tomato, olive oil, and grilled sausage exactly the way it was bred to do in Tuscany.

The cool climate Chardonnay is your friend with anything rich from the sea. Try it with butter poached halibut or a roast chicken with crisp skin, where the wine acid cuts the richness and resets your palate for the next bite. The Catalina or Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noir loves earthy savory food, so reach for seared duck breast with a cherry reduction or a plate of mushroom risotto, since the wine and the mushrooms share the same savory notes and read as one flavor. If you want to dial in a match for any bottle you bring home, our wine pairing generator will get you there.

To go deeper, explore the Santa Ynez Valley and its Ballard Canyon sub appellation, browse the broader world of Santa Barbara wine, read up on California Pinot Noir, and let the wine pairing generator match a Rusack bottle to your table.