Winemaker Kris Curran Dies

Renowned Santa Barbara County Vintners Succumbs to Cancer on December 11

Lompoc, California; Kris Curran and Bruno D’Alfonso tasting at their winery at a table made from a slab of local black walnut. | Credit: Macduff Everton

Renowned Santa Barbara County winemaker Kris Curran, who was a trailblazer for females in the historically male-dominated industry, has died. She succumbed to pancreatic cancer on December 11 surrounded by loved ones, according to a social media post.

“Our world shines less brightly without our beloved ‘Blondie,’” reads the message, using the name that Curran’s longtime partner in life and wine, Bruno D’Alfonso, called her. “She fought long and bravely.”

There’s an ongoing outpouring of messages across numerous social media platforms about her impact on the region, particularly when it comes to pinot noir. She mastered that grape from a wide variety of brands, including Cambria, Koehler, Foley, and Sea Smoke, where she was the first winemaker, helping it achieve cult status.

By 2010, Curran joined D’Alfonso in focusing solely on their own brands, collectively known as D’Alfono-Curran Wines and based on Santa Rosa Road next to a walnut orchard on Rancho La Viña. “We decided there was no point in looking for anything else — let’s just focus on what we’re doing here at Rancho La Viña,” she told me about five years ago while I was working on my book, Vines & Vision: The Winemakers of Santa Barbara County. “You do miss getting a paycheck, for god sakes! But other than that, it’s been great.”

Born in Los Angeles but raised in the Santa Ynez Valley, she grew up familiar with wine culture, playing polo with Brooks Firestone and his original winemaker Alison Green, working in Mattei’s Tavern and other wine country restaurants as a teenager, and particularly loving the 1988 Sanford chardonnay.

After a year in Hawai’i trying to become a merchant marine, she returned to the valley and met D’Alfonso in 1990. She assumed that winemakers were only hired through family ties — “I didn’t think I could do anything with wine when I met Bruno,” says Curran — but he explained that you could get a degree in the trade and be hired as a winemaker. They’ve been together ever since.

After stops at Santa Barbara City College, Allan Hancock College, UC Davis for a quarter (“I was very used to the dynamic of the hillsides and mountains — Davis is pretty flat”), and Cal Poly for her animal science degree, Curran obtained a second degree in enology from Fresno State. In 1997, she was hired at Cambria Winery in the Santa Maria Valley. Two years later, she turned a horse barn into Koehler Winery, and then was hired by Bob Davids in 2000 to help develop Sea Smoke Cellars. She went from there to Foley until going solo.

“If you didn’t know Kris, you certainly missed out on a true experience,” said winemaker Adam Lee on Facebook. “Kris was strong-willed, opinionated, independent, and a really superb winemaker. She and I butted heads a couple of times, but we never failed to come back to center. She was so generous to me with her wines and with her time. And I think the wine world will be far worse off without her. The whole world, for that matter.”

“You were a truly beautiful human being with an epic soul dear Kris Curran,” wrote Toby Rowland Jones, the founder and former president of the Big Sur Wine & Food Festival. “Your wines were stunning. Your energy and humor boundless. Safe travels off this earthly plane.”