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How Santa Ynez Valley Became California’s Most Interesting Wine Region

An eclectic, down-to-earth scene is emerging in this unusual valley, where price points are low but the wine quality itself is incredibly high.

These days, the simplest way to taste the best wine being made in the Santa Ynez Valley is to visit the former Liquid Farm tasting room way out in Lompoc, one of the farthest reaches of Santa Barbara County. There, in a cluttered, out-of-use space attached to the production facility, winemaker James Sparks just might pour you some tastes of his own label, Kings Carey wines. Lesser wines would be diminished by the makeshift room; instead, the unstructured chaos works as a foil to the precision of his winemaking. 

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“Jeff doesn’t mind if I use it,” Sparks tells Observer, sheepishly gesturing at the abandoned room, referencing Liquid Farm owner Jeff Nelson. As the winemaker for both brands, Sparks spends most of his time in Lompoc, carefully honing techniques for both labels. Takeout pizza and sandwiches from local Italian standout Stica round out our unorthodox tasting, complete with a map of the sprawling Santa Ynez Valley to trace where grapes for each vintage have been sourced.

The sudden boom in wine sales during the pandemic, then bust a few years later as Gen Z apparently turned up their nose at the whole industry, sent many small labels, like Kings Carey, reeling. Sparks was forced to shut down a former tasting space in Solvang, and is still paying off new equipment in installments, but his belief in Santa Ynez’s staying power never wavers. For his own label, Sparks sources single varietals from single vineyards, constructing wines that sing with a kind of jaw-dropping clarity. 

His wines are the reason people make the trek out to Lompoc for the occasional private visit, and don’t mind going without the trappings of a traditional tasting room. A stint on the wine list at Bell’s, the sole Michelin-starred restaurant in the area, recently guided a trove of new tasters to his unassuming digs, where three wines stand above the rest. A 2023 Perry Souix Vineyards Grenache, 2022 Sparkling Pinot Noir Rose Spear and 2022 Sémillon, all of which snap the depth of what the region could be into focus. Scrappy as the brand might be, Sparks is producing unexpectedly great wine in an area that stands to become the next big wine country destination in America. 

Of course, that isn’t surprising to anyone who’s been following Sparks’ work at Liquid Farm, a cult-y, sustainable label that’s a love letter to all things chardonnay, particularly those done in an old-world style. Their White Hill Chardonnay, an ode to Chablis, is a particular stunner. Cutting his teeth for a few years at Dragonette Cellars, Sparks took the reins at Liquid Farm in 2013, started Kings Carey a year after that, and........

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