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Gypsy Canyon Angelica

While researching Santa Barbara I came across a very small winery that only produces three hundred and fifty cases per year called Gypsy Canyon.  The draw was one of the two wines made here – a dessert wine called Angelica.


I’ll begin with some geography.  Two mountain ranges form the north and south borders of the Santa Ynez Valley.  They funnel the cool ocean air and fog into the region.  The cooler, western portion of the valley has been granted its own region called Santa Rita Hills.  Canyons run between those mountains and are generally a bit warmer, especially as one moves away from the coast.  Gypsy Canyon is on the northern side of the valley and is closer to the ocean than most, but the morning fogs do not always make their way up the canyon to the vineyard.  


Gypsy CanyonDeborah Hall originally intended to plant a few acres of Pinot Noir to sell the local winemakers, but while the vines were being planted, some nearby brush was cleared to reveal an old vineyard of scraggly vines.  They were identified as a grape called Mission, which was originally brought to California by Spanish missionaries.  After researching the history of her property, she concluded that the vines were probably planted in 1887; that makes it the oldest vineyard in Santa Barbara County.


In the modern wine making era Mission has fallen out of favor because the table wine it produces has little character.  Deborah thought it a crime to let these old vines go unused, so she looked to the history of the missionaries for inspiration.  The mission in Santa Barbara has collected the annals from all the missions in California.  There she read correspondence among missionaries about the various wines they produced.  


Mission is a red-skinned grape, so it can be used to produce red and white wine.  For sacramental purposes, a table wine was produced.  The missionaries also made a wine for themselves and their guests called Angelica.  Deborah decided to make her own wines and resurrect this long lost style.  She follows the historic model as closely as she can.


The grapes for Angelica were left to hang on the vine as long as nature would allow, making them as ripe and as sweet as possible.  For Deborah, the Mission is harvested in the middle of December.  Both red and white versions of Angelica were made, but the white was more highly prized.  For the white, the grapes were pressed and the skins were quickly removed.  Halfway through the fermentation the wine was fortified with grape spirit, which raised the alcohol content, killed the yeast and protected the wine from oxygen.  This left some degree of sweetness in the partially-fermented wine.  


After fortification, it was transferred into barrels.  Typically a wine barrel is filled to the top to prevent oxygen from getting to the wine, but the Angelica barrels were only half-full.  This allowed oxygen to turn the wine an amber color and change the fruit characteristics.  When they were ready for a new batch of bottles, they blended wines from a few years to increase the complexity in what was akin to a solera system in Spain.


Deborah’s homage is an amber color with ruby highlights.  It tastes like butterscotch, toffee, sour cherries and orange-flavored liqueur.  In keeping with the historic theme, she sought out a glassmaker to individually craft each bottle.  The labels are handmade and the neck is dipped in beeswax.  She also signs every bottle.  


Her Pinot Noir is in similar packaging.  It was a very elegant style, perhaps the lightest I have had on the journey.  I would have never guessed that she had been working with wine, let alone a grape as difficult as Pinot Noir, for less than ten years.


Too few wines in California are able to claim a sense of the state’s viticultural history, and even less live up to the quality of the reputation.  Deborah’s Angelica succeeds on both fronts.




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I solved it!  The back seat of my car is huge and I slept like a rock.  I awoke early Wednesday morning and took a tour of Solvang, which is about five miles east of Buellton.  It is the most tourist driven town that I have visited in the county, but it seems to have missed the boat when it comes to the wine crowd.  Lots of quaint inns and faux-medieval architecture, but only one wine bar and few tasting rooms.

My first winery of the day was Buttonwood, a producer who focuses on grapes from Bordeaux.  This is an oddity in the Santa Ynez Valley, but they are in a warm, well-elevated pocket.  Their flagship wine is a tasty Sauvignon Blanc.  They also offer a wine called Sibling Revelry, which is the best wine I’ve ever had under $5 per bottle. They only sell it by the case.

For me, the best wines are those that communicate the climate and the history of the vines’ surroundings.  My next stop provided a taste of the very early days of California wine.

Old Mission VinesGrapes are not native to California, but they have been grown here since the Spanish ruled.  One grape variety, called Mission, produced the wines used by missionaries in their church services.  Most of it was simple red wine, but the missionaries made a small amount of Angelica for themselves.  It was fortified and exposed to oxygen; similar to the sherries made in Jerez.  One very small producer, Deborah Hall of Gypsy Canyon, is making a modern homage to this lost classic.  She undertook the project when she discovered a Mission vineyard on her property that was planted in the 1880s and had been forgotten since Prohibition began.  Prickly ShoesWe took a tour of the vines to the chagrin of my shoes.  A more complete description of the wine and its production is coming tomorrow.

The next day I met with Peter Cargasacchi, who farms two of the best vineyards in the county.  The more winemakers I meet and the more wines I taste, the more I learn how direct the effect of the vineyard is on the finished wine.  The planting, pruning and trellising decisions do not simply produce good or bad grapes.  They determine if the wine will be fruit forward or earthy; full-bodied or light.

Shale HillsPeter began our visit on a mountain road, where we pulled over to see a side of the hill that had been cut away when the road was built.  Here we saw layer upon layer of marine sediment that had turned into shale over millions of years.  It was thrust out of the ocean when the Pacific plate collided with the North America plate.  This is the primary soil type in the Santa Ynez Valley.  It is very crumbly and has a high calcium content, which lowers the perceived acid level in the finished wine.

Bottling LineI was due back in Paso Robles that evening so I could get an early start on the bottling line at Dubost.  They do not have the equipment at the winery so they hire a mobile unit in a trailer. I was chosen to feed the foiling machine and to serve as quality control after the wine was corked.  If the fill level was too low or a cork was missing, I pulled it off the line and sent it back to the beginning.  The foil machine is an ingenious invention that pulls the foil from its stack and places it on top of the bottle for another machine to twist it down.  It worked really well – for the first three hours.  Then it didn’t.  My cushy quality control gig devolved into an I Love Lucy episode on the assembly line.

Wildfire HillsOn Saturday I returned to Los Angeles to relax, which sounds weird.  On the way I drove through the hills where the Santa Barbara fires had burned days earlier.

In the days since, I have been focusing on getting A Really Goode Job.  Murphey-Goode is a winery in Sonoma that is going to hire someone to live on their property for six months, tour Sonoma wineries and picnic sites, and make a wine to commemorate the harvest.  The Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent will be charged with blogging about the experience.  They are paying $10,000 per month!  The selection process has three stages.  The first involves submitting a resume and a sixty-second video showing your production prowess (or lack thereof) and personality.  It is progressing well and I will certainly have a good piece in time for the June 5th deadline.

To view more photos from this week, click here.

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