Zaca Mesa Winery & Vineyards

Zaca Mesa Winery & Vineyards is one of Santa Barbara County's most historically founding-significance and Rhône-variety-pioneering wine estates. The Foxen Canyon Road Los Olivos mesa plateau property — established in 1972 as one of Santa Barbara County's earliest commercial wine enterprises — created a Santa Ynez Valley mesa plateau wine estate identity that has been consistently committed to Rhône variety production since the estate's earliest pioneering plantings of Syrah, Grenache, Roussanne, and Viognier in the 1970s and 1980s when these varieties were largely unknown to California wine consumers.

Zaca Mesa's most historically consequential contribution to California wine — the training of winemakers including Jim Clendenen (Au Bon Climat), Adam Tolmach (Ojai Vineyard), and Bob Lindquist (Qupé), all of whom learned their craft at Zaca Mesa before establishing the most celebrated Santa Barbara County wine programs of the modern era — makes the Los Olivos mesa plateau estate the most personally winemaking-talent-alumni-producing and historically Santa-Barbara-County-founding-significance wine estate in the region.

The mesa plateau location provides the specific geographic and climatic foundation for Rhône variety production of individual character: the elevated plateau creates dramatic diurnal temperature swings as cool marine air masses from the Pacific Ocean replace the daytime thermal heating at sunset, producing Syrah and Grenache growing conditions with the natural acid retention and structural balance that the most food-compatible and age-worthy Rhône variety expressions require.