Sanguis
PO Box 4185
Santa Barbara CA 93140
Phone: (805) 845-0920
Email: mail@sanguiswine.com
Web: sanguiswine.com
Tastings: available by appointment only, Fri-Mon. Please call (805) 845-0920 for a reservation.

The California Central Coast's highly acclaimed producer of Rhone varietal wines, Sanguis makes unique small production blends from the best low yielding, cool climate vineyards of Santa Barbara county.

There are NO FORMULAS and NO SEQUELS - wine is first and foremost a product of nature and should reflect each vintage's specific character supported by the creative hand of the winemaker. The only thing that is always consistent is quality.

Great vineyards and farming are the basis for making great wine. The vineyards that are the basis for our wines are cool climate sites in Santa Rita Hills, Alisos Canyon and the hills east of Santa Maria.

These special vineyards, combined with sustainably farming to low yields and optimal ripeness, the gentlest handling and patience in the cellar are what make Sanguis wines what they are: Each wine we release is a unique blend, bearing a different name and label.

Purchase

We offer two options for purchase: membership and mailing list

• Membership assures you an allocation of wine that will be shipped to you twice a year, typically in April and November, along with a copy of our infamously infamous release letter via old fashioned mail.
• As a mailing list customer, you will receive offers to purchase wine twice a year via email a few weeks prior to the wines’ release date. Availability is on a 'first-come first-served' basis.

Vineyards

Cooler is better for Rhone and Burgundy varietals, which is why, over the years we have migrated to ever cooler sites. We are in the fortunate position of working in an area where the best sites are just now being developed into vineyards. After working with several established vineyards in the area, and learning which varietals and clones work best in what sort of conditions, we have developed vineyards in three of the magical sites: Santa Rita Hills, Alisos Canyon, and the hills east of Santa Maria, where moderately warm days provide for slow and even ripening while preserving beautifully pure aromatics, and cool nights help to develop deep color and give the vines a rest period while the roots and leaves absorb moisture and allow us to keep irrigation to a minimum.

Winemaking

Matthias Pippig did not go to oenology or viticulture school, and did not receive any formal training in the craft of winemaking - only some sound advice (don’t do it!). But what’s an optimist like me to do, every knucklehead has to follow his (or her, if you are a she) calling.

Minimum-Interventionist-Winemaking - The only problem with this fashionable concept is that it doesn’t work, which is why we don’t pretend to do it.

Think about it, if we didn’t intervene at every step of the way (from planting a selected species in a selected site, then farming to yields that are a fraction of what the plants would grow, if left to their own devices; deciding just when to pick, once picked, chilling the must for a gentle decomposition, followed by carefully controlling fermentation temperatures for optimum extraction; subsequent aging of the wine in a chosen combination of new and ‘neutral’ oak, or other vessels of various sizes for a chosen period of (in our case, always rather lengthy) time, and finally deciding which one of the infinite blend options will achieve the best balance), what would we really have?

Sanguis
PO Box 4185
Santa Barbara CA 93140
Phone: (805) 845-0920
Email: mail@sanguiswine.com
Web: sanguiswine.com