90 Point Wines and No Chemistry: Re-Defining Koehler Winery

“I want a 90 point wine,” Peter Koehler tells me. I think to myself that it’s certainly good to have goals. “I want to be one of the twenty most recognized wineries,” he adds. His comment sinks in and, yes, that’s more specific. After all, Koehler Winery sits on the “Fifth Avenue of wines” in Santa Barbara County. He is referring to Foxen Canyon Road, just north of tiny Los Olivos, a beautiful stretch of pavement that is home to many well-known wineries in Santa Barbara wine country. The Koehler's acquired the property in 1997 and they went through a handful of winemakers who produced good wine.

But a few years ago the re-defined goal became to produce great wines at an affordable price. The Koehler’s decided they didn't want merely good wine, they wanted outstanding. What better way to get a 90 point wine than to bring on board a known 90 point winemaker?

Up in Napa, it just so happened that Chris Stanton was looking to make his move out of the valley he'd grown up in. "Santa Barbara, the way it is now, reminds me of Napa in the 1970s," Stanton says. "Napa is so hard to get around in now, it's so congested." Stanton worked at several wineries in the area, but one in particular caught Koehler's eye. At Mayo Family Winery in Sonoma, Chris Stanton was responsible for pulling in a slew of 90+ point scores from the national wine press during his tenure as winemaker. Bingo. The offer was made and Chris and his family moved to Santa Barbara.

Stanton is notoriously simple about his process of making wine. “I’m just taking what the vineyard has to offer, doing as little as possible to it and getting a bottle of wine out of it,” he says off handedly as we sit outside near the tasting room on a crisp, late winter day. He oversees 65 acres of grapes on the Koehler property, most of which were planted in the early 1970s, including cabernet which is not known for being the most promising variety in Santa Barbara. “I’m out to prove that we can make a nice cab that’s affordable,” he says, referencing the astronomical prices that Napa demands for their cabs. He plans to bottle a 100 percent cabernet soon. “There’s a section that I pruned to one ton per acre, non-irrigated. I’m using new oak and extended fermentation. I have high hopes for our cabernet.”