So Far Out Wine Company is an organic, minimal-intervention label working out of Los Alamos in northern Santa Barbara County, built by three friends who wanted to make honest California wine without the markup or the mystique. The wines are all certified organic and all Santa Barbara County fruit, from a grippy chillable red to a textured Sauvignon Blanc, poured at a tasting room on Martian Ranch in the young Alisos Canyon appellation.

The story

So Far Out came out of a long conversation between three people who already knew the Central Coast from the inside. The winemaking sits with Andrew Jones, the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo graduate who started fermenting wine in his attic and turned that habit into Field Recordings, one of California’s most recognizable natural wine brands and one of the largest producers of pet nat in the state. In his day job Jones is a vineyard nurseryman who plans and plants vineyards up and down California, which means he knows where the interesting blocks are before anyone else does.

The farming voice belongs to Mike Testa, a fifth-generation Santa Barbara County grower and a partner at Coastal Vineyard Care Associates, the largest vineyard management company in the county. Testa has steered his own properties toward organic farming and has spent his life supplying clean, sustainable fruit to the local industry. The third partner, Jamil Williams, is a longtime Los Angeles wine veteran who runs the brand and the commercial side. He is not the winemaker, and he says so plainly. He is the one who shaped what So Far Out stands for and how it shows up in the glass and on the shelf.

Put those three together and the idea writes itself. A grower who farms clean, a winemaker who can turn that fruit into something alive, and a brand builder who wants it to be affordable and free of pretense. So Far Out is the result, a small Santa Barbara County label with a clear set of rules and a sense of humor about everything except the farming.

The place

So Far Out is based in Los Alamos, the unhurried little town at the northern edge of Santa Barbara County wine country, and its tasting room sits on Martian Ranch in the surrounding hills. This is the heart of the Alisos Canyon appellation, which earned its own federal AVA status in 2020 and is one of the newest and least crowded growing areas in the county.

The terroir here runs on the same engine that powers all of Santa Barbara wine country. The coastal mountain ranges in this part of California run east to west rather than north to south, a rare transverse orientation that turns the valleys into funnels for cool Pacific air. Morning fog and afternoon ocean breezes slide inland off the ocean, then burn back to bright dry sun, so a single vineyard can be cool at dawn, warm at midday, and cool again by dusk. That daily temperature swing is what keeps the grapes fresh, letting them ripen their fruit while holding onto the acid that makes the wines taste lifted rather than heavy. Alisos Canyon sits inland enough to ripen a wide spread of varieties, which is exactly why a label built on field blends and unusual grapes can find what it needs here.

What they grow and make

So Far Out works to a tight set of commitments: 100 percent organic grapes, 100 percent Santa Barbara County sourcing, minimal intervention in the cellar, and pricing that keeps the wines in everyday reach. Within those rules the lineup is playful and a little contrarian, which suits a winemaker who likes planting grapes nobody else has.

The wine that put the label on tables is the Chillable Red, a field blend of Nebbiolo, Charbono, and Chenin Blanc made to be served with a chill on it. It drinks with grippy tannins, bright acidity, and a tart red-fruit snap, the kind of red you pull from the fridge on a warm afternoon rather than decant for an hour. All The Rage is the more serious red, a blend of organic Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, and Marselan drawn from two Santa Barbara County vineyards, one young and one more than three decades old, and bottled without fining so it keeps its true shape. The result reads like a Bordeaux village wine, bold but still elegant.

On the white side, You Don’t Say is a natural Chardonnay made from 100 percent organically farmed Santa Barbara County fruit, and Memory Palace is a Sauvignon Blanc sourced from organic vineyards around Los Alamos and the Santa Ynez Valley. Across the range the house style is light-handed and honest, the work of people who would rather show you the grape and the place than a heavy cellar signature.

Farming

Farming is the entire point of So Far Out, not a footnote. Every wine is made from certified organic grapes, all of it grown in Santa Barbara County, with Mike Testa choosing the sites and steering the viticulture. Because Testa farms and manages organic vineyards across the county and Andrew Jones plants vineyards for a living, the label has access to clean fruit and unusual plantings that most small producers never get near, including grapes like Charbono that barely exist on the Central Coast. In the cellar the approach is minimal intervention, with wines like All The Rage bottled unfined so they carry the fruit and the year as faithfully as possible.

Visiting

So Far Out pours at its tasting room on Martian Ranch in Los Alamos, an easygoing spot in the Alisos Canyon hills where walk-ins are the norm and nobody is going to make the wine feel complicated. It is a weekend destination, open Friday through Sunday, and a natural stop on a slow loop through the quiet northern end of Santa Barbara County wine country.

Food pairing

These are wines built for the table and the patio, not the pedestal. The Chillable Red is the standout for warm-weather eating. Serve it cold alongside grilled sausages, a pepperoni pizza, or a board of cured meats and tangy cheeses. Its bright acidity slices through fat and salt the way a crisp white would, while the light grip from the Nebbiolo and Charbono still gives you something to chew on. This is a contrast pairing, the cold and the acid scrubbing the richness off each bite so you reach for the next one.

All The Rage, the unfined Bordeaux-style red, wants protein and char. Pour it with a grilled ribeye, herb-roasted lamb, or short ribs braised low and slow. The wine’s tannin binds to the protein and fat in the meat, so the steak tastes cleaner and the wine tastes rounder and softer, a textbook congruent match, and a pinch of salt on the meat lifts the fruit even higher. For the whites, the Memory Palace Sauvignon Blanc loves goat cheese, since the wine and the cheese share the same green herbal aromatics and read as a single flavor, while the You Don’t Say Chardonnay sits happily next to roast chicken or anything off the grill with a little smoke. For more ideas matched to whatever you are cooking tonight, try the pairing tool.

To go deeper, explore the wider world of Santa Barbara wine and the cool-climate grapes that define it, then brush up on the bottles in our California Chardonnay and California Sauvignon Blanc guides. When you are ready to plan dinner, the wine pairing generator will match a bottle to your meal.