Winery News

Our 2016 Carr Sangiovese was this week’s wine feature in the Santa Barbara Independent. “It’s easy to think that not enough Santa Barbara wineries make Italian varietals when you enjoy this Carr sangio. Or, perhaps just enough make them, as sangiovese makes up less than one percent of all red-wine grapes grown in California. You’re not going to find many straw-covered bottles of chianti here. This Carr is a perfect rainy-night wine (we’re getting those again!), rustic and tannic but with plenty of berries and cherry fruit too. So while it might bite back, it’s just a lover’s nibble. The rustic qualities help it stand up to heartier winter meals, too — braise some beef or lamb, make something stewy, and …

We are honored to be selected as runner-up in the Santa Barbara News-Press Readers’ Choice Awards under two categories: Winery & Wine Tasting Room. Thank you!

“Of all of the tasting rooms I have visited in the area, Carr is the most unique, making you feel extremely immersed in the wine tasting experience.”

“Light-ish garnet with crystal-clear edges and considerable sediment.. A beguiling blend of smoke, motor oil, dust and RIDICULOUS spicy sweet perfume explode out of the nose. Cassis and cold tea with milk. Almost-fat tincture of blueberry and pie-crust are buoyed along with an earthiness and briar I would come far short of calling ‘green’.”

Romance is at the heart of what makes Santa Barbara tick. Lovebirds have been flocking to The American Riviera® for engagements, elopements, weddings, honeymoons and romantic retreats for well over a century. With more than 200 wineries in Santa Barbara County, winery weddings are a particularly delicious option. If an urban winery is more your flavor, check out the barrel room in the Carr Winery tasting room in downtown Santa Barbara.

Medium bodied and garnet colored, this wine gave off different aromas as it breathed the warmth of our home. Vegetables and wet earth on opening, we later experienced dark chocolate and dark berries on the nose. The flavors were pungent spice, black pepper, and chocolate. All very enjoyable…

So you may be thinking, why should I plan my wedding at a Santa Barbara winery? Picture-perfect vineyards, romantic sunsets, spectacular scenery and some of the best wine in the world. Still need convincing? With more than 300 days of sunshine, you can also expect your weddings to be rain-free!

Now you need to narrow down your list of options. With over 100 wineries in Santa Barbara county, the choices are staggering. You can chose a picturesque country setting, a vibrant urban setting and just about everything in between. We wanted to make it a little easier for you. After much research, we narrowed our list down to the five best options.

When Ryan and Jessica Carr moved their Carr Winery operations into a sketchy industrial section between downtown and the ocean, into a Quonset hut no less, they probably had no idea that they would be pioneers. Now there is all this (deserved) publicity about the Funk Zone and the Urban Wine Trail, but the Carrs have been there for more than a decade. Ryan Carr was also an original garagista; he first made his own wine in a garage in 1999. Now he produces several thousand cases solely concentrating on Santa Barbara County grapes. But what separates him from many of his peers is that he is a grape grower as well.  While he doesn’t own any vineyards, he personally …

From the outside, visitors might be hard-pressed to imagine some of Santa Barbara County’s best wines are kept in Carr Vineyards’ Santa Ynez tasting room for aging. Inside, it’s a different story. The tasting room and warehouse on Numancia Street is rustic and artsy — a place where wine is celebrated, rather than merely sampled.

It’s rare to see a quality Cabernet Franc, as they are usually blended with other Bordeaux wines. Ryan, however, has found a niche for growing and nurturing this grape so it can stand alone as its own varietal. And he’s been making it to high acclaim for over a dozen years.