Sunstone Winery - "Sunlight Into Wine"

A half hour scenic drive north on Highway 154 from Santa Barbara will drop you into the Santa Ynez Valley. Sunstone Winery is one of the closest to Santa Barbara, just past the turnoff to highway 246.  Go past the "wild west" town of Santa Ynez and the mammoth Chumash Casino, undergoing renovation, then turn left on Refugio Road. You'll enter an area that feels like a world unto its own. Expansive hills slope gently towards the Santa Ynez River, with a dramatic backdrop of the Santa Ynez Mountains, completely unmarked by development. No wonder Fred and Linda Rice fell in love with the place when they discovered it in the 1980's and decided to purchase an abandoned horse ranch. Linda was known as "The Visionary" and what she had envisioned for the property was a palatial, but comfortable home in the style of the grand villas of Italy or the chateaus of France.

Fortunately, as a successful contractor, Fred had the means to build their dream. As the couple travelled in France, they found architectural treasures in reclamation yards: limestone blocks, heavy hand-carved beams from Queen Victoria’s lavender factory, hand-formed roof tiles, a prison cell door from Normandy constructed during Napoleon’s reign. They shipped forty-five containers, each containing 40,000 pounds of material, from Europe to build their dream home.

I was able to tour the Villa thanks to the friendly Sunstone Events Director Annamarie Kostura, whom I met at the Santa Ynez Valley Visitor's Association new member mixer. Due to a combination of the hit movie "Sideways" and the high ratings awarded Santa Ynez Valley wines, tourism has been booming in the Valley. Wineries, hotels, and business owners formed the SYVVA to promote managed growth in the Valley. As  Board President John Kochis pointed out, "Growth will happen; you can't keep people away from a beautiful place like this, but we are looking at quality, not quantity growth".
"Stunning" is not hyperbole when describing an architectural marvel that is castle-like due to its grandeur, the interior and exterior limestone, the soaring ceilings and the immense windows through which light streams.  All I can say is if you live the lifestyle of the 1%, the entire 8,500 square foot Villa can be yours for $15,000 a night: all five spacious suites, the ample grounds, the outdoor wood-burning pizza oven, bocce court and the kitchen with a 1,000 year old stone sink from France and floor-to-ceiling windows leading to a Tuscan-style courtyard with bocce ball court, hedged with lavendar and rosemary. Or, for considerably less money, you can stay in one of the enormous suites, each with a separate entrance, which Bion's wife Anna has decorated in comfortable luxury, with big puffy couches to sink into while reading a book by the fireplace, big soaking tubs, and luxury linens.  As I was there, workers were readying an expanse of lawn for an outdoor wedding, which will be picture-perfect with the Villa and the spectacular views of vineyards and mountains.

I hadn't visited Sunstone before; I didn't realize a place like it existed outside of Napa. To enter the tasting room, you walk through a natural wall of towering oaks, then walk past a classic Provençal French kitchen with copper pots and braided garlic hanging over a rustic wood table, to a long bar cheerfully lit with candles and wall sconces. Two stone barrel-aging caves, over 5,000 square feet in size, have been carved into the hillside, and a private tasting room displays racks of verticals of Sunstone's wines. The long bar opens to a sunny patio with a view of the lower half of the 28-acre vineyards and the spectacular mountain backdrop. It's no wonder Sunstone Winery was named “Best Tasting Room” in the Santa Barbara Independent reader poll.

Sadly, Linda Rice passed away in 2010. The Rice family continues to run Sunstone, one of the few family-owned and managed wineries in the Valley, as many others have been bought by corporations. Fred and Linda's son Bion is President and CEO of Sunstone. The family has moved from the Villa and it is now being transformed into an exclusive event destination for wine pairing dinners, wine country accommodations, weddings and corporate events.

From the beginning, the vineyards have been grown without pesticides, herbicides or synthetic fungicides. The Rice family have been careful stewards of the land, guarding the health of the vineyards, workers and consumers by being certified 100% organic. Taste Sunstone's wines at their tasting room, especially their rich Rhone varietals, including their award-winning Merlto, Viognier and Syrah. By the way, I was happy to see a copy of Touring & Tasting in the Villa's kitchen!