The Faces of Lompoc Wine
By
Steve Clifton (Brewer-Clifton and Palmina)
For Steve Clifton (at left), the Lompoc Wine Ghetto was love at first sight. He first encountered the Sobhani Industrial Park in early 1999, when he and his business partner, Greg Brewer, visited Longoria's new winemaking setup. "We looked around his space, and we thought, This is all we need. We don't want some big, fancy place. We just need a cool, open building," he says.
Clifton and Brewer had started their label, Brewer-Clifton, three years earlier, but like many startup winemakers in Santa Barbara, they had been working for better-established vintners and making their wines in borrowed facilities. The industrial park, however, offered them a way to set up their own shop, and by the end of their visit they had signed a lease for a building that was going up a few yards away. At the same time, Clifton was also looking for a space for his other winery, Palmina, which he had started a few years earlier in order to make Italian varietal wines. Clifton had been introduced to Italian wines on a trip to Italy, and had spent time assisting his friend Joe Bastianich with the Bastianich winery in Friuli. In the years when he and Brewer started making wines for the Brewer-Clifton label, he had also started producing a very small amount of sangiovese. He increased production every year, and by the time he moved to Lompoc he had also started making nebbiolo, barbera, and pinot grigio.
To Clifton, Santa Barbara County is an ideal place for making northern Italian wines. "In Friuli and Piedmont, these wines are grown where the cold air from the Alps meets the warmth coming off the Mediterranean or the Adriatic, and the grapes are planted where these two forces meet," he says. "In Santa Barbara, you have a cold, arctic current coming down the coast from Alaska and heat coming from the inland desserts, so it's the same thing; just in the opposite direction." When Clifton started making these wines, the reaction in much of the community was somewhat skeptical, but over time he has won the admiration of not just area winemakers but also connoisseurs, as his bottles have shown up on the wine lists of such high-end restaurants as the French Laundry and have also received praise from Robert Parker.
Though Palmina has grown exponentially in the past decade, and Clifton has had to lease additional buildings in the complex to keep up production (he now makes 17 wines, including malvasia bianca, tocai friulano, dolcetto, and a number of nebbiolos), he has no intention of leaving the wine ghetto. For him, it's not just the savings and the convenience of the location that make the place special but the feeling of community with the other winemakers. "People ask me when I'm going to be ready to build a winery out on the vineyards, but the truth is, it doesn't excite me," he told me. "I'm just a really social animal. I was the winemaker on wineries located out on vineyards, and I felt completely isolated. Here, I'm tasting wines and talking with other winemakers every day. So, if I was ever going to build a place, I'd want to build something that other people could rent spaces in,;I'd want to just re-create what I have here."
Sashi Moorman (Stolpman Vineyards, Piedrasassi, Holus Bolus, Evening Land Vineyards, and Harrison Clark)
Many winemakers in California make wines for more than one label, but very few ever have the chance to work with five at once, as Sashi Moorman has done for the past four years. Moorman, who started working at the Lompoc Wine Ghetto in 2001, moved to the location as the winemaker for Stolpman Vineyards, but over the years he has added to his portfolio by becoming a winemaker for Evening Land Vineyards (which makes pinot noir from locations in Santa Barbara, Napa, Oregon, and Burgundy), starting Holus Bolus and Piedrasassi with other winemakers in the ghetto, and consulting for the Santa Ynez winery Harrison Clarke (as well as others).
Moorman first came to winemaking at the age of 24 after working as a cook in New York City after college. Although he hadn't gone to culinary school (he graduated from Vassar with a degree in geography), his pure enthusiasm for food helped him land a job as a line cook at États-Unis, a small, well-regarded restaurant on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where he learned not just about local, seasonal foods but also about wine. "Jonathan Rapp [the co-owner and wine buyer] was a wine fanatic, and I learned more working at that restaurant about wine than I think I ever have in such a short period of time," he explained. "People say to me all the time 'I want to be a winemaker; what should I do?', and I always tell them go work in a restaurant with a really good wine program, because there's no other place where you'll have the opportunity to taste so much wine in a short period of time. Unless you're independently wealthy, you can't afford to participate by just buying bottles. But in a great restaurant with a great wine program, you can taste so much great wine."
Inspired by this experience, Moorman moved to California in 1996 and found a job at Ojai Vineyard (a couple of hours south of Lompoc), where he learned to make wine before becoming the winemaker at Stolpman in 2001 and moved its facilities to the wine ghetto. "The industrial park is extremely convenient because it has allowed each individual winery to grow, in terms of space, as production grew," he told me, as he showed me around his facilities on my most recent visit. Though the winery had initially leased only one shed, it now uses a total of seven, using some to ferment and age their wines and others simply to store equipment. "At most wineries that are built out on vineyards, if you ask them what's the one thing you would change, they would say they wished the space were bigger so they could grow easily," he says.
Ultimately, however, the real benefit of working in Lompoc has been Moorman's proximity to other wineries, which offers him the opportunity to work for other labels and collaborate with other winemakers. The purpose, for Moorman, in working with so many different groups—aside from the joy of making the wines—is to learn as much as he can as quickly as he can. "I think that to make the best wine, you really have to have a vision and know what it is that you want to do, and you can try to figure that out by working with one set of variables, or you can try to figure that out working with a lot of different variables," he says. "For me, it's much more advantageous to see a wider scope."
Each new collaboration and experience has, to some extent, changed how Moorman makes wine. Some of these experiences give him the chance to work with other wine connoisseurs who are doing daring things, like the sommelier Rajat Parr, of Michael Mina in San Francisco (see "The Believers", April 2009). Others have given him the chance to go out on a limb. With Piedrasassi, for instance, he began working with Rimrock, a cool, foggy vineyard that was planted with syrah and which during one year produced grapes with only 22 brics of sugar, significantly lower than the usual level. "I thought to myself, You just can't pick syrah at 22 brics, it will be disgusting," Moorman told me, "but it was November 30, and the leaves had all fallen off the vine, so we harvested them and made wine, and it turned out to be really great wine. We were amazed." With each of these experiences, Moorman has taken the things he's learned back to Stolpman and his other labels, ensuring that his approach to winemaking continues to evolve and change with every vintage.
For Steve Clifton (at left), the Lompoc Wine Ghetto was love at first sight. He first encountered the Sobhani Industrial Park in early 1999, when he and his business partner, Greg Brewer, visited Longoria's new winemaking setup. "We looked around his space, and we thought, This is all we need. We don't want some big, fancy place. We just need a cool, open building," he says.
Clifton and Brewer had started their label, Brewer-Clifton, three years earlier, but like many startup winemakers in Santa Barbara, they had been working for better-established vintners and making their wines in borrowed facilities. The industrial park, however, offered them a way to set up their own shop, and by the end of their visit they had signed a lease for a building that was going up a few yards away. At the same time, Clifton was also looking for a space for his other winery, Palmina, which he had started a few years earlier in order to make Italian varietal wines. Clifton had been introduced to Italian wines on a trip to Italy, and had spent time assisting his friend Joe Bastianich with the Bastianich winery in Friuli. In the years when he and Brewer started making wines for the Brewer-Clifton label, he had also started producing a very small amount of sangiovese. He increased production every year, and by the time he moved to Lompoc he had also started making nebbiolo, barbera, and pinot grigio.
To Clifton, Santa Barbara County is an ideal place for making northern Italian wines. "In Friuli and Piedmont, these wines are grown where the cold air from the Alps meets the warmth coming off the Mediterranean or the Adriatic, and the grapes are planted where these two forces meet," he says. "In Santa Barbara, you have a cold, arctic current coming down the coast from Alaska and heat coming from the inland desserts, so it's the same thing; just in the opposite direction." When Clifton started making these wines, the reaction in much of the community was somewhat skeptical, but over time he has won the admiration of not just area winemakers but also connoisseurs, as his bottles have shown up on the wine lists of such high-end restaurants as the French Laundry and have also received praise from Robert Parker.
Though Palmina has grown exponentially in the past decade, and Clifton has had to lease additional buildings in the complex to keep up production (he now makes 17 wines, including malvasia bianca, tocai friulano, dolcetto, and a number of nebbiolos), he has no intention of leaving the wine ghetto. For him, it's not just the savings and the convenience of the location that make the place special but the feeling of community with the other winemakers. "People ask me when I'm going to be ready to build a winery out on the vineyards, but the truth is, it doesn't excite me," he told me. "I'm just a really social animal. I was the winemaker on wineries located out on vineyards, and I felt completely isolated. Here, I'm tasting wines and talking with other winemakers every day. So, if I was ever going to build a place, I'd want to build something that other people could rent spaces in,;I'd want to just re-create what I have here."
Sashi Moorman (Stolpman Vineyards, Piedrasassi, Holus Bolus, Evening Land Vineyards, and Harrison Clark)
Many winemakers in California make wines for more than one label, but very few ever have the chance to work with five at once, as Sashi Moorman has done for the past four years. Moorman, who started working at the Lompoc Wine Ghetto in 2001, moved to the location as the winemaker for Stolpman Vineyards, but over the years he has added to his portfolio by becoming a winemaker for Evening Land Vineyards (which makes pinot noir from locations in Santa Barbara, Napa, Oregon, and Burgundy), starting Holus Bolus and Piedrasassi with other winemakers in the ghetto, and consulting for the Santa Ynez winery Harrison Clarke (as well as others).
Moorman first came to winemaking at the age of 24 after working as a cook in New York City after college. Although he hadn't gone to culinary school (he graduated from Vassar with a degree in geography), his pure enthusiasm for food helped him land a job as a line cook at États-Unis, a small, well-regarded restaurant on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where he learned not just about local, seasonal foods but also about wine. "Jonathan Rapp [the co-owner and wine buyer] was a wine fanatic, and I learned more working at that restaurant about wine than I think I ever have in such a short period of time," he explained. "People say to me all the time 'I want to be a winemaker; what should I do?', and I always tell them go work in a restaurant with a really good wine program, because there's no other place where you'll have the opportunity to taste so much wine in a short period of time. Unless you're independently wealthy, you can't afford to participate by just buying bottles. But in a great restaurant with a great wine program, you can taste so much great wine."
Inspired by this experience, Moorman moved to California in 1996 and found a job at Ojai Vineyard (a couple of hours south of Lompoc), where he learned to make wine before becoming the winemaker at Stolpman in 2001 and moved its facilities to the wine ghetto. "The industrial park is extremely convenient because it has allowed each individual winery to grow, in terms of space, as production grew," he told me, as he showed me around his facilities on my most recent visit. Though the winery had initially leased only one shed, it now uses a total of seven, using some to ferment and age their wines and others simply to store equipment. "At most wineries that are built out on vineyards, if you ask them what's the one thing you would change, they would say they wished the space were bigger so they could grow easily," he says.
Ultimately, however, the real benefit of working in Lompoc has been Moorman's proximity to other wineries, which offers him the opportunity to work for other labels and collaborate with other winemakers. The purpose, for Moorman, in working with so many different groups—aside from the joy of making the wines—is to learn as much as he can as quickly as he can. "I think that to make the best wine, you really have to have a vision and know what it is that you want to do, and you can try to figure that out by working with one set of variables, or you can try to figure that out working with a lot of different variables," he says. "For me, it's much more advantageous to see a wider scope."
Each new collaboration and experience has, to some extent, changed how Moorman makes wine. Some of these experiences give him the chance to work with other wine connoisseurs who are doing daring things, like the sommelier Rajat Parr, of Michael Mina in San Francisco (see "The Believers", April 2009). Others have given him the chance to go out on a limb. With Piedrasassi, for instance, he began working with Rimrock, a cool, foggy vineyard that was planted with syrah and which during one year produced grapes with only 22 brics of sugar, significantly lower than the usual level. "I thought to myself, You just can't pick syrah at 22 brics, it will be disgusting," Moorman told me, "but it was November 30, and the leaves had all fallen off the vine, so we harvested them and made wine, and it turned out to be really great wine. We were amazed." With each of these experiences, Moorman has taken the things he's learned back to Stolpman and his other labels, ensuring that his approach to winemaking continues to evolve and change with every vintage.
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