Sharpening the Focus at Pence Vineyards

It’s been an action-packed two decades for Blair Pence since he planted his eponymous vineyard in the hills just west of Buellton, and not just due to the usual wine country ups and downs. 

He’s careened confidently into some of the region’s most controversial affairs, leading the successful (though angrily attacked) push to expand the Sta. Rita Hills appellation eastward as well as fighting (with much more wine industry support) the movement to develop marijuana farms next to vineyards. Today, while pursuing his dream to build a winery and hospitality facility on the upper mesa of his Highway 246 property, Pence is staring down numerous permitting hurdles, expected and otherwise — some of which he believes are due to his troublemaking for the County of Santa Barbara powers-that-be over his cannabis concerns.

And yet, despite these often tumultuous two decades of toil, Pence still talks about his vines and wines with a childlike glee, exuding infectious excitement about the latest plantings and bottlings with a massive grin on his face. His fervor for pinot noir and chardonnay is unrelenting — he’s an esteemed member of Burgundy’s famous Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, after all, visiting the French birthplace of these varieties every year and even starting Santa Barbara’s own chapter. And he’s more proud than ever of the Pence Vineyards & Winery package, explaining, “It took a while to get the team together.”

After years of contracting his winemaking to Sashi Moorman’s Provignage consulting firm, Pence recently hired former UCSB soccer goalie Brittney Rogers away from Provignage to be his full-time winemaker.  “We’re not part of the program anymore,” he explained. “We are the program.” He also retained Drake Whitcraft, who’s made his own wines from the Pence property for years, as a consultant, and enlisted experienced sommelier Tristan Pitre — who ran San Ysidro Ranch’s wine program for four years and then spent a year in sales at Samsara Winery — to oversee the visitor experience. (Pitre, however, just gave notice that he’s leaving.) 

As Pence drove around his nearly 50-acre vineyard one recent morning, showing off the existing but underused equestrian center where he’d like to put the future tasting room and winery, he spoke a lot about what’s no longer there. He’s ripped out most of the once-exciting blocks of syrah, grenache, and gamay, all to intensify his commitment to the pinot noir and chardonnay that he believes define the region. 

“We stopped trying to be all things to all people,” said Pence, who felt his winery risked becoming  jack-of-all-trades and master of none. “I see a lot of wineries that try to do everything, and they wind up compromising. I don’t want to go to Burgundy to drink aligote and gamay. I want to focus on what’s best.”

The little gamay that is left goes into the brut rosé sparkling wine, which they produce alongside a blanc de blanc from chardonnay, both of which are made under the advice of California bubbly wizard Michael Cruse. Visitors to the estate — where the tastings are appointment only but can frequently be made with little advance notice — often start with these sparkles touring the nearly 50-acre vineyard, which also features looks at the olive grove and resident cattle herd. Then guests settle into one of four different experiences in the refurbished 1911 barn, all of which include some small bites. 

There’s the entry-level introductory Foundry tasting ($60), which provides an introduction to a handful of their dozen or so annual bottlings; the bubbles-only tasting called Perlage ($100), which includes caviar; and the collector-focused Lincoln tasting ($100) that features older vintages, including fantastic aged chardonnays. “That’s probably the most eye-opening for guests,” said Pitre. “Consumers don’t think about holding white wines, so it’s great to give them that opportunity. We do that work for them.”

And for $200 per person, you can book the Vigneron tasting, in which Rogers herself will guide the tour and flight. She may tell you of her upbringing in Temecula, although that had little to do with her move into wine. That came due to a tasting room job at Melville Winery during COVID, which quickly shifted into a cellar role. She stayed there for four vintages, and found that the teamwork and hustle of harvest was quite familiar to the former goalie, who played for UCSB from 2014 to 2018. “Production reminds me a bunch of sports,” said Rogers.

Even when she is not running your flight, Rogers makes sure to update the rest of the team on the latest happenings in the vineyard and cellar. “The information is really current for what’s happening right now,” said Pitre. “It’s a real authentic experience. It’s not canned.”

This extensive lineup of experiences is all part of Pence’s strategy to vet customers and make sure they’re serious about buying wine before stepping onto the property. “We’re trying to qualify the customers,” he said, “and that works.”

With the hospitality part dialed in, Pence continues to study the vineyard. He particularly prefers the California heritage clones like Calera and Mount Eden, which he obtained directly from those vineyards’ owners Josh Jensen and Jeff Patterson, respectively.  But he knows it will require patience beyond his years to truly understand. 

“It takes a while to figure it out,” he said. “The Burgundians have 1,000 years on us!”

Pence Vineyards, 1909 West Highway 246, Buellton; (805) 735-7000; See pencevineyards.com