About Claiborne & Churchill Winery
Claiborne & Churchill is a small, family-owned Edna Valley winery founded in 1983 by Clay Thompson and Fredericka Churchill, and it helped put this cool coastal region on the wine map. Inspired by the wines of Alsace, they became specialists in dry, aromatic whites, most notably Dry Riesling and Dry Gewurztraminer, alongside estate Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and small lots of other varieties.
The winery itself is a piece of green-building history: one of the first straw-bale-insulated wineries in California, naturally cool and energy-efficient. Tastings are relaxed and personal in a genuinely welcoming space, a rewarding stop for anyone curious about beautifully made dry Alsatian-style wines that are hard to find elsewhere in California.
What Wino Notion Loved
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Claiborne & ChurchillClaiborne & Churchill Winery is the most personally Alsatian-white-variety-singularly-committed and straw-bale-insulation-architecture-specifically-designed Central Coast wine estate.
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Claiborne Thompson andClaiborne Thompson and Fredrika Churchill, academics who left university careers to pursue the most personally Alsatian-variety-curious and unconventionally straw-bale-architecturally-sustainable Central Coast wine estate vision available, established their San Luis Obispo estate in 1983 with dual founding convictions: that Edna Valley's cool maritime growing conditions produced Gewurztraminer, Riesling, and Pinot Gris of world-class Alsatian white variety quality, and that their winery building should be constructed using straw bale insulation for the most energy-efficient and architecturally unconventionally sustainable California wine estate building available.
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The straw baleThe straw bale winery building, one of the first and most extensively documented straw bale construction projects in California's wine industry, creates natural insulation that maintains the most energy-efficiently consistent barrel aging temperatures available from any naturally insulated California winery building without mechanical climate control systems.
"Claiborne Thompson and Fredrika Churchill's 1983 San Luis Obispo Alsatian white variety estate, the most personally Als"
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Featured Wines
Gewurztraminer
Dry Gewurztraminer
Edna Valley · Claiborne & Churchill Estate
Gewurztraminer from Claiborne & Churchill Winery (Edna Valley, Claiborne & Churchill Estate).
Estate
★★★★☆
Riesling
Dry Riesling
Edna Valley · Claiborne & Churchill Estate
Riesling from Claiborne & Churchill Winery (Edna Valley, Claiborne & Churchill Estate).
Estate
★★★★☆
Pinot Gris
Pinot Gris
Edna Valley · Claiborne & Churchill Estate
Pinot Gris from Claiborne & Churchill Winery (Edna Valley, Claiborne & Churchill Estate).
Estate
★★★★☆
Tasting Experiences
Visit Website →Straw Bale Alsatian White Walk-In
Taste the wines at Claiborne & Churchill Winery in the Edna Valley. Daily 11am to 5pm, walk-ins welcome.
From $20
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