About Samuel Louis Wines
Samuel Louis Smith works as a micro-negociant out of Ingalls Street in Santa Cruz, which means he mostly buys fruit from small independent growers rather than farming his own, then does all the vinification here.
The sites are the point. He concentrates on cool, mountainous parcels influenced by the cold water of Monterey Bay, on soils weathered from granite, shale and sandstone, and the vast majority are organically farmed. Nelson sits at 1,700 feet in the Summit subregion, planted in 1999 on ground that had spent thirty years as a Christmas tree farm growing silvertip firs. Gali is the opposite end of the scale, at 400 feet in Corralitos about six miles from the ocean, and among the coolest sites in the range.
In 2024 he took on the farming of Thomasen's Split Rail Vineyard, a three-quarter-acre parcel of Syrah in Corralitos, so the operation is no longer purely a buyer.
The style is described as neoclassical and the details bear that out: lower alcohol, higher acidity, stems included in the reds, native fermentations with little or nothing added. The range runs Chardonnay, Gamay Noir, Pinot Noir and cool-climate Syrah drawn from Santa Barbara, Monterey and the Santa Cruz Mountains.
A micro-negociant chasing the coldest parcels on the Central Coast, from a unit on Ingalls Street.
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Site-first winemakingParcels chosen for elevation, marine influence and soil, most of them organically farmed, and kept separate in the cellar.
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Gamay Noir, which is rare hereAlongside Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and cool-climate Syrah, a variety almost nobody else in the region bottles.
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A properly low-intervention cellarNative ferments, stem inclusion in the reds, and little or nothing added.
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Now farming as well as buyingTook over Split Rail, a three-quarter-acre Syrah parcel in Corralitos, in 2024.
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In the westside walkShares an Ingalls Street address with Madson Wines, a few doors from Sones, MJA and Rexford.
"The most site-obsessed list on Ingalls Street, and the only place to find Gamay here."
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