The view from the northeastern corner of Cambria Winery’s 1,600-acre vineyard in the deep heart of the Santa Maria Valley tells the whole story.
Down toward the riverbed are old chardonnay and pinot noir vines, planted east to west as far back as 1970 by Louis Lucas in a large vineyard called Tepusquet, a Chumash word for “copper coin.” Then there’s the sleek winery itself, built by Jess Stonestreet Jackson and Barbara Banke, whose Jackson Family Wines purchased the property in 1986 and made it the core of their Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay, America’s top-selling chardonnay for the past quarter-century. Coming up the increasingly steep slopes are younger vines, planted north to south in the 1990s and 2000s with both classic and modern pinot noir and chardonnay cuttings. They serve as the base for Cambria’s popular Benchbreak Chardonnay as well as much tinier lots of clone- and site-specific bottlings.
And right in front of me is the protagonist of this tale: winemaker Denise Shurtleff, who joined Cambria in 1999. She’s as modest as they come in an industry of the opposite, even though her ability to produce some of the best bottlings in the region while also churning out the most wine each year in Santa Barbara County, at 150,000 annual cases, is unrivaled.