The Cellar

Q: In another boost for the region that the movie “Sideways” made famous, Food & Wine magazine last month named Sanford & Benedict Pinot Noir of Santa Barbara County one of “40 Wines that Changed the Way We Drink.” How did Pinot Noir get started in that region?

The short answer is two guys named Sanford and Benedict in 1973, but the longer answer is far more interesting. It includes a bit of cultural rebellion, scientific minds thinking out of the box, surprisingly little trial and error, and even input from Palisadians at a couple of crucial points.

Richard Sanford and Michael Benedict met piloting sailboats up and down the coast in the late 1960s. Sanford had been a Navy officer during the Vietnam War and he wanted to drop out of the culture that had sent him off to fight.

Benedict was the manager of the UC Santa Barbara Field Station on Santa Cruz Island; both were budding wine geeks. Trained in geography and botany, respectively, they decided to team up and plant a vineyard, with financial backing from three Angelenos they had met on their sailing rounds.

Sanford and Benedict used their scientific training to search for the right combination of soil and climate, settling finally on a plot near the town of Lompoc that was then a dairy and beanfield, in a region most regarded as too cold for grapes.

They bought the land from Palisadian attorney Bill Calfas, whose dreams of a lakefront resort had fallen through when Lompoc decided not to create a reservoir nearby. Sanford and Benedict moved onto the land in 1971 and lived there without electricity for several years.

They first planted Cabernet Sauvignon and Riesling, selling the grapes to another winery, and once they established that, they planted what they really wanted: Pinot Noir, which at that time, almost nobody in California was making very well.

They bought cuttings from Karl Wente, who had tried and failed with Pinot in Livermore. In 1973, they planted 22 acres each of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, as they converted the dairy barn into the first winery in the Santa Rita Hills. The original oak fermentation vats, which still sit there, came from a local hot tub shop.

The first commercial release of Sanford & Benedict Pinot Noir made a purple splash in 1978. Robert Lawrence Balzer described the wine in the Los Angeles Times as “an American Grand Cru in a Lompoc Barn.”

Wine shops such as Wally’s, Beltramo’s and the Duke of Bourbon signed on to stock it. Other wineries began popping up in the region.

In 1980, Sanford left the partnership to form Sanford Winery, which expanded into neighboring acreage. Sanford himself moved on in 2005 to found Alma Rosa, where he is still the mentor of the operation. (Alma Rosa winemaker Nick de Luca graduated from Palisades Charter High School in 1989.)

When “Sideways” came out in 2004, Benedict had been retired for nearly 15 years. Pulled back into the trade by consulting jobs, he recently founded Lavender Oak Winery, planted a new vineyard and has also resumed making wine from those historic vines that he planted.

Sanford Winery, now owned by the Terlato family, controls the vineyard today. They sell some of its grapes to Benedict and a couple of other producers, but mainly it’s Sanford winemaker Steve Fennell who gets to craft the crop into wine.

He said of the founders, “I am still amazed by what Richard and Michael did.”