Carey Cellars, where he came on as winemaker in 1979. Rick left Santa Barbara for a job as Cellarmaster at Napa’s Chappellet Vineyards in 1978, but soon returned when he heard about a position at a new small winery, J. When Tchelistcheff let Rick know that Firestone was looking for a cellar foreman, Rick interviewed, got the job and moved to Los Olivos in 1976. Rick had spent some of his teen years in Santa Barbara when his father, an enlisted serviceman, was stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Tchelistcheff told Rick about Firestone’s new winery in Santa Barbara where he was also consulting, and shared with him his excitement about Santa Barbara’s wine producing potential.

There he met famous pioneering California winemaker Andre Tchelistcheff who was consulting there. Longoria, known as Rick in Santa Barbara’s winemaking community, found his first job in wine at Sonoma’s Buena Vista Winery. Longoria now employs a Ganimede for a portion of his Pinot Noir and Tempranillo. Longoria is gentle and soft spoken, and seems to have a boundless interest in new techniques and experiments going on in the winemaking world: from ocean-submersion wine aging experiments to the Italian Ganimede fermenter, which utilizes the CO2 gas that builds up during fermentation to gently percolate the grape must. He feels this led him early on to a “non-establishment” kind of career, winemaking. He’s a self-described product of the Sixties counterculture, who graduated from U.C. Richard Longoria has been making wine for nearly 40 years. Both winemakers– Longoria’s Richard Longoria and Rusack’s Steven Gerbac–are modest, low key, high achievers who constantly experiment, searching for ways to improve their already excellent wines.Īs it happens, Longoria and Gerbac’s careers intersected long ago: Gerbac’s eighth grade science project involved studying malolactic fermentation with Longoria. Two more Santa Barbara County producers I visited last month whose wines greatly impressed me possess winemakers who are highly respected by their peers. Bordeaux varieties planted at Rusack’s Ballard Canyon vineyard

2010 clone 5 santa barbara pinot noir