Sommelier Brian Mcclintic weighs in on the 2013 vintage

The Prosperous Drought: 2013 Vintage Report
A Sommelier’s Predictions for Santa Barbara County Wines Harvested Last Year

Monday, April 14, 2014
by BRIAN MCCLINTIC

When you think of drought, images of abundance and teeming life rarely follow. But Mother Nature has a tendency to make up the rules as she goes along. Every vintage of Santa Barbara County wine manages to keep the watchful vigneron on his or her proverbial toes. And quite emphatically, the harvest of 2013 was no exception. Here’s what to expect in the wines to come, including those that we are featuring at Les Marchands’ second annual wine futures tasting this Saturday, April 19.

Read the full article here…

Sta. Rita Hills:

It was a warm year overall but very even. Yields were overall quite large — in some places bigger than ’12. There was one weird heat spell for a few days in the first week of September where evening temperatures nearly crept up to 80 degrees. This incident triggered the pick for a lot of the earlier producers. Ryan Zotovich loves his syrah. Rajat Parr of Sandhi and Gavin Chanin of Chanin Wines each sing the same tune with their pinot: ripeness and freshness.