Winery News

Carr Winery’s 2017 Lyons Vineyard Grenache from the Los Olivos District has been rated 91 points by Wine Enthusiast, earning a nod in the magazine’s Advanced Buyers Guide. Check out the review in full online. “Deeper and darker dried plum aromas play with fresher tones of hibiscus on the nose of this single-vineyard expression, which also offers dried herb and light pine tones,” writes contributing editor Matt Kettmann. “Black plum and elderflower flavors make for an elegantly plummy sip, finishing on gingerbread spice.” Wines scoring 90 to 93 points are considered “excellent” wines “highly recommended” to readers, according to Enthusiast‘s rating scale. The 2017 Carr Grenache from Lyons Vineyard is the first wine to come from this ultra-high-density vineyard in the Los Olivos District. …

Carr Winery has been featured in the Los Angeles-based publication, 360 Magazine. Check out an excerpt from the article below, or read the full story by Vaughn Lowery. Photos courtesy of Vaughn Lowery “Since 1999, Owner/Winemaker/Sommelier Ryan Carr and wife Jessica Carr have been developing an impeccable assortment of Pinot wines – crisp, juicy and delicious. Established in downtown Santa Barbara, their main tasting room is inside of a quonset hut. If the corrugated structure doesn’t enthrall you to enter, Jessica’s warm smile and innate ability to promote her product will have you become a member of their 800+ wine club. The decor is modern yet industrial with a saloon-ish style bar with wine on tap. Adjacent is an outdoor …

Harvest is in full swing here at Carr Winery! We’re a little more “pressed” for space in the tasting room than usual as cocktail tables give way to fermenting bins and grapes are brought in by the truckload. It’s a hectic, fun, busy time of year that we hope you’ll get to experience firsthand over the next few weeks. Here’s a little bit about what we’ve been up to. Last week, we kicked off harvest with Pinot Noir, which we brought in and crushed the same day (photos below). We also brought in six tons (that’s an elephant’s-worth, if you’re counting!) of white wine grapes, including Viognier, Grenache Blanc, and Chardonnay. The Viognier and Grenache Blanc will be used in …

“Ryan Carr was part of the original team that moved into the Funk Zone in 2005 to start Cellar 205, a cooperative space that opened the mostly forgotten waterfront neighborhood up to its ongoing tasting room boom. But a couple of years later, Carr needed more space, so he searched across Santa Barbara for a new location. He found an old Quonset hut on Salsipuedes Street, next door to the recently established Telegraph Brewing Co. The tall and wide building had originally been constructed at the Santa Barbara Airport many miles away for military barracks during World War II, but was moved downtown in the 1950s. Trying to give the impression of a large cave, Carr turned the large warehouse …

Carr Winery has been featured as a don’t-miss urban winery in a new article in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the full piece here. “There is a long history of urban wine in Santa Barbara County. In 1964, Santa Barbara Winery began making wine in a nondescript warehouse near the city’s oceanfront. But instead of the posh resorts or kitschy restaurants that you might expect to line the longtime tourist hub’s seaside blocks, the neighborhood was mostly home to seafood processing plants, scuba diving equipment manufacturers and other semi-industrial, far-from-flashy operations. […]   Altogether, there are more than 30 tasting rooms on the Urban Wine Trail today. Learning about wine in downtown Santa Barbara may not always be as romantic …

SANTA BARBARA, CA—Carr Vineyards & Winery will celebrate its 20th anniversary this fall, commemorating the milestone with an anniversary party in the winery’s downtown Santa Barbara tasting room on September 14th from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. The anniversary marks 20 years since owner and winemaker Ryan Carr’s first vintage of Cabernet Sauvignon in 1999—a homemade, 10-case-production wine from the Santa Ynez Valley which lay the groundwork for Carr’s professional winemaking career.  By 2005, Carr Vineyards & Winery had grown into a 1,000-case project operating out of the shared-space winemaking facility, Cellar 205. Around the same time, Carr introduced its first white wine—a Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Gris—and Carr Pinot Noirs began earning early recognition, too, scoring 94 points in Wine …

Carr Winery has been featured on NBC L.A.! California Live went on a wine crawl through Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone, learning why Santa Barbara has been nicknamed “the American Riviera.”

Vacation Idea Magazine has featured the Carr Warehouse in Santa Ynez on their list of “22 Best Things to Do in Santa Ynez, California.” Read all about it here! “With two California-based locations, Carr Winery’s Santa Ynez Tasting Room and Warehouse features a 3,800-square-foot climate-controlled facility that stores the many delicious wines produced by Carr. The open-floor layout lets you see where the wines are waxed, bottle-aged, and crated for shipment all from the comfort of the u-shaped bar and booths that are available there. You’re invited to visit with friends and family and enjoy wine on tap, wine by the glass, and private wine tastings which you can schedule in advance. Popular wines include the Carr Sauvignon Blanc, Carr …

Santa Barbara County has been named the “most dynamic wine scene in California” by Matt Kettman in the San Francisco Chronicle‘s wine-focused platform, The Press. Notes Matt Kettman in the recent article, “There is no more dynamic of a wine-tasting scene in the world than what can be experienced in Santa Barbara County right now. Thanks to the Transverse Range, the mountains and valleys on this southwestern corner of California run east to west, rather than north to south — it’s the only place on the West Coast of the Americas where this geographic anomaly occurs.” “Viticulturally, the significance is that the Santa Ynez and Santa Maria valleys open directly onto the frigid Pacific Ocean, and then snake inland, where the …

…”To me, “Haley Corridor” rings with enough existing identity and meaning that it might stick, as Haley Street is the dominant cultural hub in those parts, which also include stretches of Salsipuedes and Quarantina streets. But naming the area is the last thing on organizer Ryan Carr’s mind, as he’s just trying to stir up attention for the now-bustling area…” – Matt Kettmann, SB Independent