Hidden on the flat, alluvial plains between Santa Maria’s suburban tracts, strip malls, senior facilities, and ballfields, the Allan Hancock School Winery doesn’t boast the steep hillsides or stellar views that typify a lot of Central Coast wine nation.
However these 4 acres, the place 50 totally different varieties and clones of wine grapes develop, function an out of doors classroom, instructing the subsequent technology of vintners easy methods to prune, when to select, and nearly all the pieces else required to handle a winery. Simply throughout the road, hidden behind the institutional facades of a neighborhood school campus, these similar college students learn to flip these grapes into wine, working collectively to provide greater than a dozen bottlings annually.
“We’re focusing extra on the sensible winemaking operations,” defined Alfredo Koch, the top of Allan Hancock School’s viticulture and enology division, the place he began in 2007 and helped construct the on-site vineyard in 2014. “The scholars love the problem of creating the wine.”
The wines, usually priced between $15 and $20, are typically fairly wonderful, steadily on par or outperforming wines that value exponentially extra. I say as a lot as somebody who critiques, via a blind tasting course of, greater than 200 wines from throughout the Central Coast each month for my critic’s job at Wine Fanatic. I’m repeatedly, and fortunately, shocked each time I see yet one more Allan Hancock pinot noir or syrah or malbec scoring larger than manufacturers made by better-funded and extra skilled groups.
A lot of that has to do with the standard of the school. Along with Koch, who began engaged on his household’s vineyards in Argentina at age 5 earlier than getting levels at Cal Poly and UC Davis, there are: winery operations teacher Ric Fuller, who has greater than 40 years of expertise in Monterey and Paso Robles; the just lately retired Doug Braun, who left final yr after instructing on the school for greater than three many years; vineyard lab specialist Kelsie Norris, who handles a lot of the vineyard’s day-to-day operations; and Federico Casassa, a professor of sensory evaluation at Cal Poly.
However there’s additionally one thing particular about that suburban winery too. Although not notably lovely, geologically distinctive, or dramatically sloped, the vines really deceive the west of the border of the federally acknowledged Santa Maria Valley appellation, which can make the property the closest industrial winery to the coast in the complete Santa Maria space.
My tough calculations present Allan Hancock School Winery being fewer than 12 miles from the closest shoreline, which is barely nearer because the crow flies to the coast than Solomon Hills Winery, normally proclaimed because the westernmost vines of the valley. It’s additionally a lot nearer than a lot of the Sta. Rita Hills down within the Santa Ynez Valley, save for properties like La Barge and Duvarita that experience the road round 11 miles from the coast. However irrespective of the best math, the winery’s coastal proximity ensures that the Pacific Ocean’s affect retains acidity vibrant and flavors contemporary on the ensuing wines.
Getting your palms soiled is a part of the enjoyable of working in the Allan Hancock School Winery. (Left) Pinot noir | Credit score: Matt Kettmann
They are often tasted for $5 and bought each Friday from 2 to five p.m. on the campus vineyard, in addition to throughout particular occasions that embrace a 5K enjoyable run each Might and a competition that includes different faculties wineries from Cal Poly, Fresno State, UC Davis, and elsewhere held every June. The winery and vineyard will even be open to the general public in the course of the fifth annual Santa Barbara County Farm Day on September 23, simply considered one of 17 stops that folks could make as a part of a full-day agricultural expertise.
The eye couldn’t come at a greater time, as Koch defined that admissions to this system have but to get well from pre-pandemic highs. There are about 150 college students at the moment, however this system — which additionally consists of the potential to review wine on the College of Bordeaux — can deal with twice as many. Many graduates go on to Cal Poly, Fresno State, Oregon State, or different wine packages, however loads of folks go proper into making wine for a paycheck. “There was excessive demand within the trade,” confirmed Koch.
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Go to Allan Hancock School Winery & Vineyard in the course of the Fifth Annual Santa Barbara County Farm Day on September 23. See a full schedule at santabarbaracountyfarmday.com. For extra on the vineyard and to purchase the wines, see hancockcollege.edu/vineyard.
