Winemaker Lane Tanner’s Greatest Hits

Santa Barbara Women Winemakers & Culinarians Kick Off Celebration with Tribute Dinner

Matt Kettmann and Lane Tanner | Photo: Future Perfect Wine

Very few people — and no other women — are as intimately tied to the rise of Santa Barbara County’s wine industry as Lane Tanner.

After almost accidentally falling into the craft in her native town of Kelseyville in Northern California, Tanner was encouraged by none other than California wine god André Tchelistcheff to move south to work at Firestone Vineyard in 1980. Two years later, she moved onto Zaca Mesa, co-created the Hitching Post wine brand in 1985, and was then the first woman in the region to launch her own wine brand in 1990. Along the way, she worked, befriended, and a few times became intimately involved with our most important wine country pioneers.

After the rush of Sideways, she’d eventually shutter her eponymous, pinot noir–focused brand and leave the wine business for a few years. But then she was lured back in by Will Henry to launch Lumen Wines a dozen years ago, for which she was nominated by Wine Enthusiast magazine as American Winemaker of the Year in 2019. Nowadays, Tanner will continue to offer advice as needed with Lumen, but she’s very happy to be officially out of the wine business.

“I’ve been trying to retire for a few years now, and it turns out, you can’t just walk away,” said Tanner. “You’ve got to slowly butt out!”

That’s why she’ll be feted during the Santa Barbara County Women Winemakers & Culinarians Celebration on Thursday, March 6. The Lane Tanner Tribute Dinner & Stories at Zaca Creek Tavern kicks off this year’s weekend of events, which includes a comedy soiree on Friday night, the grand tasting on Saturday, and a bubbly brunch on Sunday. For tickets and details, see sbwomenwinemakers.com.

To get a taste of what Lane plans to serve up on March 6, I sat down with her last month to talk about her life and career as cameras rolled and wines were poured, including her still-stunning Lane Tanner Sanford & Benedict pinot noir from 1994. Please enjoy these “greatest hits” from our nearly two-hour-long conversation.

Kelseyville Roots: “My family had walnuts. My cousins had pears. My dad actually fired me once from picking walnuts. When you pick walnuts, it turns your hands black. It’s embarrassing to go to school with black hands, so I’d do my best not to touch them. Of course, he hired me back the next day.”

Lane Tanner with her 2003 syrah| Photo: Future Perfect Wine

Dyslexia to Science: “I’m dyslexic. That’s something a lot of people don’t know. I don’t recognize faces. I don’t remember names. I have a hard time with nouns, like, ‘Is that a cat or a dog?’ So, I went into science. I love numbers. But when I was young, I was considered dumb because I couldn’t speak very good. I had to talk really slow because I had to think about every word I was saying. By the time I get into high school, people are realizing that I’m actually smart. I was the class salutatorian.” She went on to study chemistry at San Jose State.

Her Meeting with Andre: After working a bottling line shift in place of her mom at Konocti Cellars in Kelseyville after college, the winemaker Bill Pease asked Tanner to help with analysis in the lab during harvest. “I get into the lab about a week later, and I’m waiting for somebody to come in and give me the manual to tell me what to do. Nobody does. Instead, the winemaker comes in, and he’s got this gentleman with him who is really interesting-looking. He’s about my height, with one big eyebrow, an older gentleman, and he obviously has some power, because everybody seems to be really cautious of him. Bill introduces me as the new enologist. Now, I had never even heard the term ‘enologist’ before, and I had no clue who this gentleman was. But he was their consultant, André Tchelistcheff, the godfather of the California wine industry.”

First Swirls: Pease invites Tanner to taste with them. “I don’t even know what that means. They pour some wine, and the first thing they do is they pick up the glass and swirl it. Take a 7-year-old child and pour some wine, and have them swirl it, and you will see that it’s not a natural thing. Mine was a pretty clunky swirl. Then they put it in their mouth and spit it into spittoons on the ground. This is 1980, and women don’t spit. You could see I was a little distressed, so they handed me a coffee cup, and I couldn’t even spit in the coffee cup.”

Smell Power: “It turns out I had an incredible sense of taste and smell. People think that’s just such a wonderful thing. And it’s not. When I was growing up, I was the one that’d walk into somebody’s house and think, ‘What is dying in here?’ I’d go to Fisherman’s Wharf with my high school class, and I’m barfing while they’re all eating stuff, because the dead-fish smell overwhelms me. I never thought of it as a positive, ever, until that very moment. When they got back from lunch, Bill asked, ‘Lane, is there any way you can stay and be our enologist? Because André really likes you. So, I went from zero to enologist in four hours, with no training.”

Not Fitting in at Firestone: “The first day that I was there, we went out to dinner, and all they could talk about was like movie stars they’d seen. How far have I slid down the ladder of intelligence? I cried. I thought, ‘What have I done?’ Then I talked to André about it, and he said, ‘This is going to work for you.’ He really kept me in the whole situation. He was right.”

Women Winemaker Woes: “It was so non sequitur that it was confusing for people.” When she won a gold medal for a Hitching Post wine she made in the mid-1980s, her then-husband Frank Ostini jumped up to accept the award. “I was so pissed. I’m seething. We go into the hallway, and I’m so mad. This wine writer comes up and he goes, ‘You seem to be a little upset.’ I told him the reason. And he goes, ‘Oh, you can’t be a winemaker. You’re too good-looking.’ It was just horrible. But during that time period, that’s just what you dealt with.”

Onto Mushrooms: “I’m getting into the mushroom-growing industry. I’ve got mothers for about 10 different kinds of oyster mushrooms. In my garage, I’ve got my inoculation room. In my study, I’ve got my grain spawn room. Right next to it in my pantry, I’ve made that into a mycelium growing room. Then in my office, I’ve got the fruiting body room.”

Dream Life: “It’s the best life I could have ever not imagined as a child. It’s a job where, part of the year, you’re grungy and dirty and sticky, and sometimes you go to bed at night with grapes in your hair. Then, when you have nothing to do, you just float. Then, part of the year, you put on a gown and you eat incredible foods — truffles and fish eggs and things that you never would have ever thought about. And then there’s times when you just do solid work. Truly, my life has been awesome.”

The Santa Barbara County Women Winemakers & Culinarians Celebration is March 6-9. Events include the Lane Tanner Tribute Dinner & Stories on March 6; Sips and She-Nanigans comedy night on March 7; the Grand Tasting on March 8; and a Bubbly Bash on March 9. This year’s nonprofit beneficiaries are the NatureTrack Foundation and Mo’s To-Go. For more information on the philanthropies, see sbwomenwinemakers.com/charity. For tickets and details, see sbwomenwinemakers.com.