Tomi Cellars is a winery built around a table as much as a barrel. Founded by Boyd Shermis and Denise Davis, two veterans of the film industry, it sits among the warehouses of Buellton and draws people from all over the world, some for a glass, many to roll up their sleeves and help with harvest. The wines are hand-crafted from the best vineyards on the Central Coast, but the real product is the gathering: friends, family, and strangers who keep coming back.

A lifetime of wines we have liked

Boyd Shermis and Denise Davis spent their careers in film before wine pulled them in for good. For more than twenty years together they kept a running profile of over a thousand wines we have liked, a personal library of taste that now serves as the backbone of everything they make. Denise is the owner and creative director, the inspiration behind the cellar, while Boyd handles the winemaking and strategy.

Boyd took the plunge in 2019, starting as a cellar rat under winemaker Ross Rankin of Imagine Wine, learning old-school techniques that have been in place for centuries. When that chapter ended, Tomi Cellars took over and upgraded the winery space, giving the couple a long runway to get their own vision off the ground. The result is a winery that feels less like a business and more like an open invitation.

Sourcing the Central Coast

Tomi philosophy is plainspoken: each year, make the finest wines possible from the best vineyards on the Central Coast of California, wines that evoke their place of origin. That means chasing fruit across Santa Barbara County and beyond rather than being tied to a single estate, picking sites that deliver the character the team is after.

Santa Barbara County is an ideal home base for that hunt. Its east-west valleys open to the Pacific, so cold ocean air and fog reach deep inland, giving cool sites for delicate wines and warmer pockets for bigger reds. From a working winery in Buellton, right between the cool Sta. Rita Hills and the warmer Santa Ynez Valley, Tomi has its pick of both worlds.

The wines

Tomi makes a hand-crafted range across red, white, and rose, each chosen to express location and varietal character rather than fit a formula. Boyd blends the old-school methods he learned in the cellar with his own modern studies, aiming for wines with both structure and soul.

Because production is small and personal, the lineup shifts with what the vineyards give each vintage. The constant is the standard, set by that thousand-bottle profile of wines the founders have loved, and the belief that the best wine is the one shared at a crowded table.

What to pour it with

Tomi is built for food and company, so let the structure of each wine guide the plate. With the reds, reach for protein and fat: a medium-bodied red poured alongside a grilled steak or lamb chops works because the wine tannins bind to the fat and protein, leaving the meat tasting cleaner and the wine rounder and less sharp. The same red against a lean piece of white fish would turn metallic, because there is nothing for those tannins to grab, so save the reds for the hearty plates.

Pour the whites with richer seafood and creamy dishes, where bright acidity is the hero: a crisp white slices through butter, cream, and fried food and resets your palate for the next bite, which is why a high-acid white and a plate of fried calamari is pure physics. The rose is the table peacemaker, happy with salty charcuterie, grilled vegetables, or anything off a summer spread, since a little salt in the food rounds the wine out and lifts its fruit. When in doubt, match the weight of the wine to the weight of the dish and you will rarely go wrong.

Tomi Cellars: common questions