Kisses from the sea have long been putting fuel in Colin McNany’s tank, from his Palos Verdes childhood to his college days in Santa Cruz to his current winemaking adventure in Santa Barbara County.
“Everywhere I’ve traveled in my life, it’s always about the ocean,” said McNany, whose work and play have taken him from Australia’s Margaret River to Mallorca in the Mediterranean. “We hang out at the sea, and then gravitate toward the vineyards in the hills. That’s where I found the love for cool-climate varieties.”
As the proprietor of MarBeso Wine — which translates to “sea kiss” in Spanish — McNany proudly proclaims on each bottle how far those grapes were grown from the coastline: 12.6 miles for his pinot noir from Our Lady of Guadalupe Vineyard near Lompoc, for instance, or 14.8 miles for his Ascona Vineyard pinot, which is grown on peaks between San Jose and Año Nuevo. He emphasizes the freshness of those grapes by picking at lower sugars, not messing with them in the cellar (native yeasts, neutral wood, etc.), and releasing them quickly.