{"id":634,"date":"2017-06-29T18:17:39","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T18:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=634"},"modified":"2024-06-29T17:37:24","modified_gmt":"2024-06-29T17:37:24","slug":"sanford-winery-vineyards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=634","title":{"rendered":"Sanford Winery & Vineyards"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sanford Winery (http:\/\/www.sanfordwinery.com\/<\/a>) makes Burgundian wines \u2013 Chardonnay and Pinot Noir \u2013 in Santa Barbara County\u2019s famed Santa Rita Hills.\u00a0 Sanford has a tasting room in the Santa Rita Hills\u00a0that we haven\u2019t visited and also one in the city of Santa Barbara, which we have.\u00a0 Sanford is a Terlato property, the same as Chimney Rock<\/a> in the Napa Valley.\u00a0 That fact alone is evidence of high quality wines and knowledgeable servers.\u00a0 Santa Barbara\u2019s wine tasting scene is a bit schizophrenic, with a wild party atmosphere in the so-called Funk Zone downtown near the ocean and more refined tasting rooms uptown in or near the classy shopping district on State Street.\u00a0 Needless to say, Sanford is uptown.<\/p>\n

Some in-town tasting rooms are strictly commercial.\u00a0 Others project a feeling of being in a nice club room.\u00a0 Still others try to incorporate the atmosphere of the town they are in into the tasting room.\u00a0 Sanford is a bar, a very classy bar to be sure, but all the same, a bar.\u00a0 It has a polished wooden floor, some large and small tables and a bar with some high stools.\u00a0 There\u2019s no standing tastings at Sanford.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of Winery Explorers (<\/em>http:\/\/wineryexplorers.com\/<\/em><\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s in a shopping center.\u00a0 Again, it\u2019s an up-scale shopping center with restaurants and shops full of beautiful things, but it\u2019s a shopping center and it affects the wine tasting experience at Sanford.\u00a0 The wines, which are first-rate, become another expensive luxury item.\u00a0 Okay, all wine is an expensive luxury, but it doesn\u2019t need to feel that way.\u00a0 So when you visit Sanford, and we hope you do, keep the door at your back.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of Sanford Winery<\/em><\/p>\n

What you will get when you go to Sanford is, in ascending order, a lesson in their wines, their Sanford & Benedict vineyard and winemaking in the Santa Rita Hills.\u00a0 All of this is accompanied by quite a broad range of wines for you to sample.\u00a0 Some of the wines Sanford produces are breathtakingly expensive; in all likelihood you won\u2019t get a chance to taste those.\u00a0 But the ones that are available to taste give an excellent perspective of what the Santa Rita Hills is capable of and what American Pinot Noirs ought to be.<\/p>\n

In some ways, the best part of tasting in Sanford\u2019s Santa Barbara location is that you get to sip these wines without the necessity of an hour or more of driving to Lompoc, where Sanford is based.\u00a0 In fact, that case could be made for tasting wines in the city<\/em> of Santa Barbara rather than trying to take in all the wineries in the rather vast county<\/em> of Santa Barbara.\u00a0 Many other top-end wineries have realized that and have opened tasting rooms in-town.<\/p>\n

The wine-tasting experience at Sanford Santa Barbara is a bit unusual but definitely worthwhile.\u00a0 The same may be said of visiting Santa Barbara itself, to be addressed in a future Places to Visit article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sanford Winery (http:\/\/www.sanfordwinery.com\/) makes Burgundian wines \u2013 Chardonnay and Pinot Noir \u2013 in Santa Barbara County\u2019s famed Santa Rita Hills.\u00a0 Sanford has a tasting room in the Santa Rita Hills\u00a0that we haven\u2019t visited and also one in the city of Santa Barbara, which we have.\u00a0 Sanford is a Terlato property, the same as Chimney Rock … Continue reading Sanford Winery & Vineyards<\/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":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":650,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions\/650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}