THE LOIN Cabernet Sauvignon
Estelle Vineyard


I really love all the new vineyards over in the interior of the Santa Ynez Valley. In this area, loosely known as Happy Canyon, vineyards like Vogelzang are slowly but surely changing the way people think about the quality of Cabernet Sauvignon grown in Santa Barbara County. But while this new viticultural district is compelling, there is a part of me that now wishes it wasn’t quite so hot. I have been there on a number of occasions taking cluster samples under the 100+ degree sun, and the thought would cross my mind, “I wonder what it would be like if there were a vineyard or two just a few miles to the west of here?” What I imagined was something slightly closer to the ocean, perhaps picking up just the tail end of its cooling influence before the dead heat of the inner valley. “How about some Cabernet growing in temperatures consistently in the 90’s, not the 100’s,” I would think to myself. Then I discovered the Estelle Vineyard.

This new 75 acre vineyard was indeed planted in just this place, on hillsides above the most interior part of the Santa Ynez appellations’s deep alluvial floor, about 2-3 miles closer to the ocean than Happy Canyon. When I first went by the vineyard the gate was open, so I drove in. The soil was incredible. It was a fairly rich looking loam full of cobble stones of all sizes and colors. Most interesting was the way some of the more bluish rocks almost had a waxy luster, like the phenomena that is associated with a quartz material known as chalcedony. I saw plenty of Syrah, plenty of Cabernet Franc, and a little Merlot. As I started to get sick to my stomach over the thought that the grower might not have planted any Cabernet Sauvignon, I finally found a couple of acres of it off in a bottom corner of the vineyard. “Nice, but hardly the kind of thing to start a revolution with,” I thought. Disappointed, I went home and called the vineyard manager to tell him I would take the two acres. “Oh, you must have missed blocks eight and nine,” he said. “Eight and nine,” I said? “Yea,” he said, “there’s twelve acres of Cab on a nice south facing hillside in the back.” Immediately, I got into my car and drove the 30 miles back to the other side of the valley.

As I approached Estelle’s front gate, with my eyes trained on the hills above the main vineyard, I saw it. It’s a weird feeling to have something that you have been dreaming about all of a sudden materialize right in front of your eyes. Indeed, it was a very sweet south facing hillside, and as I got closer, it just kept getting better. The vine spacing was good. The row direction was right. The rootstocks were appropriate, and at least six of its twelve acres were planted to a revered clone of Cabernet (337). But what really got me, of course, was the dirt. As I got closer I could see the same kind of soil that I had seen in the vineyards below, but now the rocks really seemed to ooze out of everywhere, in some places comprising the only thing that could be seen on the ground under the vines. I was blown away. All of the Estelle Vineyard was tantalizing, but this was the fillet minion. From the standpoint of terroir, this was THE LOIN. I called the vineyard manager back on my cell phone. “I’ll take it,” I said. “I’ll take every inch of it.”

Click here to download the vintage note for 2003 "THE LOIN" Cabernet Sauvignon in Adobe Reader PDF format.
Click here to download the vintage note for 2004 "THE LOIN" Cabernet Sauvignon in Adobe Reader PDF format.
Click here to download the vintage note for 2005 "THE LOIN" Cabernet Sauvignon in Adobe Reader PDF format.
Click here to download the vintage note for 2006"THE LOIN" Cabernet Sauvignon in Adobe Reader PDF format.

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