Santa Barbara’s Ancient Wines, Then and Now

The road to Santa Barbara County’s oldest winery does not travel through rows of gnarled vines nor beneath the majestic native oak trees of the Santa Ynez Valley. Rather, it meanders through the suburban tract homes of the Goleta foothills and up a dead-end road, where a gigantic bougainvillea bush, brilliantly blooming poinsettias, and a cornucopia of citrus trees await.

There, protected from the elements by the corrugated tin roof and wooden walls of a green barn, stand the remnants of San Jose Winery, where the padres of Mission Santa Barbara made wine almost two centuries ago. It hasn’t been in operation since Prohibition, and the surrounding seven acres of grapevines were uprooted decades ago in favor of lemon and avocado trees.

But the crumbling adobe walls, dusty basket press, wicker-wrapped demijohns, and well-worn ladder rungs that rise above the fermentation vat serve as fading reminders that winemaking is not just a modern pursuit in Santa Barbara. In fact, the county was one of California’s biggest and best wine regions throughout the 1800s, a century before the modern viticultural boom started here in the late 1960s.