{"id":3309,"date":"2026-05-21T18:54:31","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T18:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=3309"},"modified":"2026-05-21T18:54:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T18:54:31","slug":"paradise-springs-winery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=3309","title":{"rendered":"Paradise Springs Winery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Paradise Springs is not your usual winery.\u00a0 For openers, it\u2019s not one winery but two \u2013 one facility in Virginia and another in Santa Barbara<\/a>, California.\u00a0 This piece is about the West Coast branch; we haven\u2019t visited the one in Virginia (yet).\u00a0 It\u2019s a young winery; they started making wine in Virginia in 2010 and in Santa Barbara in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n

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When we refer to Santa Barbara wines, we often include those made in the area surrounding the city, Santa Barbara County.\u00a0 And in fact that\u2019s where Paradise Spring\u2019s grapes come from.\u00a0 But the tasting room puts the funk in Funk Zone<\/a>, Santa Barbara\u2019s hot-spot wine tasting area.\u00a0 It\u2019s situated on a parking lot and it has a hole of miniature golf outside.\u00a0 Tables outside are on artificial grass; no vines are in evidence.\u00a0 If you look at the building from just the right angle, it\u2019s quite attractive, but it\u2019s hard to avoid looking at the food truck in the parking lot and the visitors playing golf.\u00a0 To be fair, the interior of their facility is well-appointed but we only discovered it after we had enjoyed a rather extensive list of wines that we tasted outdoors.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The interior of Paradise Springs\u2019 Santa Barbara tasting room.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Our server \u2013 excuse us, he\u2019s an Experience Manager \u2013 was knowledgeable but decidedly casual.\u00a0 Taken together, everything about Paradise Springs would have turned us off, since we\u2019re rather conventional in our wine tasting tastes.\u00a0 The saving grace is that we really enjoyed the wines we got to taste.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not surprisingly, the Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs come from Santa Rita Hills<\/a> and the other reds are made from grapes from the much warmer Happy Canyon.\u00a0 (It\u2019s amazing how different the climate can be, with both areas in Santa Barbara County.)\u00a0 Our tastes run towards red wines, so we focused on those.\u00a0 One of their outstanding Pinot Noirs is sourced from Sanford & Benedict vineyard, among the best known in the county.\u00a0 There\u2019s also a Rh\u00f4ne blend, which Californians insist on calling a GSM (Ugh!\u00a0 Yes, the Rh\u00f4ne makes wines from Grenache, Syrah and Mourv\u00e8dre but they sometimes use other grapes such as Carignan and Cinsault.\u00a0 Why do West Coast vintners insist on making wine from just those three grapes?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was one wine that stood out to us.  They call it The Roshi and it\u2019s a Bordeaux-style Meritage.  This one is made from both Happy Canyon and Virginia<\/em> grapes.  Paradise Springs proclaims it as the only bi-coastal wine and we\u2019re sure that that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we\u2019re wine tasting in the city of Santa Barbara, we generally stick to the up- and mid-town wineries that are, in general, quite classy.  We do go into the Funk Zone too, but with some trepidation.  The wineries in that part of town have improved recently, so we can\u2019t just skip it.  If you\u2019re in the mood for sipping some serious wine in a hippy-dippy atmosphere, we recommend you put paradise Springs on your itinerary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paradise Springs is not your usual winery.\u00a0 For openers, it\u2019s not one winery but two \u2013 one facility in Virginia and another in Santa Barbara, California.\u00a0 This piece is about the West Coast branch; we haven\u2019t visited the one in Virginia (yet).\u00a0 It\u2019s a young winery; they started making wine in Virginia in 2010 and … Continue reading Paradise Springs Winery<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3309"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3312,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3309\/revisions\/3312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}