Star Lane Vineyard
In the hot, remote eastern corner of the county called Happy Canyon, Star Lane grows the Cabernet Sauvignon that proves Santa Barbara can do Bordeaux too.
Santa Barbara made its name on cold, foggy Pinot Noir. But drive to the far eastern end of the Santa Ynez Valley, past where the marine air gives out, and you reach Happy Canyon, the county’s hot pocket, and the one place that reliably ripens the red grapes of Bordeaux. Star Lane is the estate that planted its flag here.
The county’s Bordeaux outpost
The Dierberg family, descended from generations of Missouri farmers, came to Santa Barbara in the 1990s with an unusual ambition: to make serious Cabernet Sauvignon in a county that everyone said was too cold for it. They were half right. The coast is too cold, but Happy Canyon, shielded from the ocean and baked by long sun, is not. They planted Star Lane high on the canyon’s rugged hillsides, and when Happy Canyon of Santa Barbara earned its own AVA in 2009, Star Lane’s powerful, structured, age-worthy Cabernets were the wines that justified it. The same family also owns the cool-climate Dierberg estate out west, giving them both ends of Santa Barbara’s remarkable climate range.
Everyone said Santa Barbara was too cold for Cabernet. Star Lane found the one place it is not.
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Star Lane is a Bordeaux house. Its estate Cabernet Sauvignon is the headliner, dark, firm, and built to age for decades, joined by Cabernet Franc and Bordeaux blends, and a notably bright Sauvignon Blanc that thrives on the same warm hillsides. These are some of the most structured red wines in Santa Barbara County, a world apart from the delicate Pinot a few valleys over.
What to drink it with
The Cabernet Sauvignon wants a fatty ribeye or a rack of lamb, where the wine’s firm tannin binds to the fat and protein and both come out softer and rounder for it. Save the lean white fish for another bottle, where there is nothing for the tannin to grab. The Sauvignon Blanc, by contrast, is a classic with fresh goat cheese or oysters, the wine and the cheese meeting on the same green, grassy note.
Plan your visit
Star Lane’s estate sits deep in Happy Canyon and is visited by appointment, with the family also pouring in a tasting room in the village of Los Olivos. Either way, it is the place to taste a side of Santa Barbara that surprises almost everyone.
Taste Santa Barbara Cabernet
Book a tasting with Star Lane and discover the hot corner of the county that ripens serious Bordeaux reds.
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