By my count, I review around 3,000 wines a year from the Central Coast and Southern California in my contributing editor role for Wine Enthusiast , and then probably taste another 1,000 or so annually from near and far in the course of my work and personal lives. Of those, probably about a quarter are from Santa Barbara County, which most likely means that I taste more of our region’s fermented grape juice than anyone else on the planet.
That puts me on the frontlines of discovering new brands and winemakers who are up to interesting things. Here are a few projects that have piqued my interest lately. Look out for feature stories on some of these down the road in my Bottles & Barrels column for the paper.
Turning Tide: Alisa Jacobson was the first person hired at Joel Gott Wines in Napa in 2003, and she spent the next 18 years helping that label grow from a regional brand of about 1,000 cases to an international powerhouse that produces more than one million cases annually. As the winemaker in charge of finding the vineyards to feed that beast, Jacobson traveled all around California, Oregon, and Washington.