Full Belly Files | What Sets Pali Wine Co. Apart

This edition of Full Belly Files was originally emailed to subscribers on August 25, 2023. To receive Matt Kettmann’s food newsletter in your inbox each Friday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

When I first met Aaron Walker more than a decade ago, we were in similar stages of our personal and professional lives. We both had young children and were settling into the long-term groove of our careers — he as winemaker for Pali Wine Co., me as wine writer for this newspaper and other publications — so we became friends rather quickly after hanging out for this 2012 article.

I was already friendly with numerous other vintners at that point, but Aaron was maybe my first true peer of that group: close to my age, similar family setups, working for a paycheck, and living in downtown Santa Barbara (not the Santa Ynez Valley). We hung out quite a bit, especially during the annual run of New Noise Santa Barbara — the music festival and conference I co-founded and helped run from 2009 to 2015— and even got into trouble in New York City, New Orleans, and San Diego together, connecting almost entirely by coincidence each time.