If you have ever been into the tasting room and noticed the barrels that are kept in the room right behind the bar, those are not just for decoration, they are full of wine.  All of our white wine processing is done right here in our downtown facility, from grape to bottle.  Right now we are tanking up the 2007 Santa Barbara County Chardonnay out of barrel, prepping it to be bottled in about two months. 

This tanking process is very meticulous as it requires efficiency and timeliness in moving the wine around.  The barrels are first pulled from the barrel room by a forklift.  Next, our winemakers sort through these barrels, sampling them to decide which barrels are going to be used in the Santa Barbara Chardonnay, and which will be saved for our other Chardonnays. 

To get the wine from barrel into tank, a method called “Bulldogging” is used.  This refers to the apparatus, The Bulldog, that is used to pressure the barrels using Nitrogen.  If you pressurize the barrels in this manner, the wine is pushed out by the inert gas through the hose.  By not using a pump to transfer the wine into tank, any oxygen uptake into the wine is reduced.  According to our Assistant Winemaker Ryan, this “raises the freshness factor of the wine tremendously.”  Over the past 10 years, Ryan has honed his skill for moving wine around, and he has developed techniques in speeding that process along. 

Right now we also have an allotment of 2006 red wines getting prepped for bottling.

2006 Primitivo Joughin Vineyard

2006 Sangiovese Stolpman Vineyard

2006 Nebbiolo Stolpman Vineyard

2006 Lagrein Joughin Vineyard

2006 Negrette Joughin Vineyard

2006 Syrah Santa Ynez Valley

Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager