Once you scale the cliff-like driveway and park on a precarious mesa high above the Santa Ynez River, it doesn’t take long to figure out why they named this stretch of land Rancho Salsipuedes, which roughly translates to “get the hell out if you can.” It’s hard to find a flat piece of earth on the tumultuous property — whose 3,700 acres straddle the western fringe of the Sta. Rita Hills winegrowing appellation around the intersection of Highway 1 and Santa Rosa Road near Lompoc — and much of it is dissected by vertical canyons that not even the cougars dare.
That didn’t stop the Premier Pacific Vineyards team — an investment outfit of the state pension fund CalPERS, which formerly owned the property — from planting about 190 acres of grapes there seven years ago. Since vintners tend to be the masochistic type, those paying attention quickly rejoiced in the resulting pains, from the poison oak that grows in between rows to the maddening Pacific winds that blow constantly to the ash-like diatomaceous earth that serves as soil on the upper ridges.
Combined with sketchy roads and vines planted at every imaginable angle, these conditions make growing grapes in the Radian and Bentrock vineyards logistically difficult, to say the least. But that’s also the charm — so much charm, in fact, that, according to the Santa Barbara County Assessor’s Office, the current owners paid about $25 million in 2014 for the property, which also includes the six-acre Puerta del Mar vineyard to the west, outside of the appellation.
