Cimarone & 3CV
The Cimarone Winery is located on our Three Creek Vineyard in the Happy Canyon AVA of Santa Barbara. Our goal is to produce handcrafted high-quality wines under our two labels - Cimarone and 3CV - with an emphasis on Bordeaux and Rhone varietals. To make great wine we need great farming, which we get from the pre-eminent Coastal Vineyard Care. Renowned wine maker Andrew Murray embodies our goal of making thoughtfully constructed serious wines.
From shipping our first 2006 vintage in Spring 2008 the quality of our wines has generated us broad distribution with a focus on California, and a strong and appreciative supporter base.
Enjoy our 3CV wines for everyday drinking. Our top-of-the-line Cimarone wines represent the best wine from the Estate. We are a small winery with the goal of making great wines.
Roger & Priscilla Higgins | Please Visit Our Blog
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Three Creek Vineyard
We planted the 26 acre Three Creek Vineyard in the eastern end of Santa Ynez in Santa Barbara County starting in 2001. The full potential of the hillside gravelly serpentine soil in the area known as Happy Canyon to produce world class Bordeaux-styled wines had not been realized at the time and we started with a lot of Syrah, some Cab Franc, Sangiovese, Malbec and Petit Verdot. In the ensuing years the quality of the Bordeaux varietals came through and in 2009 the Happy Canyon of Santa Barbara AVA was approved.
We have improved and reshaped the vineyard over time, with the excellent counsel of our vineyard management company – Coastal Vineyard Care, led by Jeff Newton, who have farmed the vineyard since 2005. The vineyard is now planted to 5.6 acres of Sauvignon Blanc, 4.5 acres Cabernet Franc, 4.3 acres Cabernet Sauvignon, 2.3 acres Sangiovese, 2.1 acres Petit Verdot, 1 acre each for Malbec and Merlot, 4 acres of Syrah, and 0.5 acres of Semillon. This aligns with our red wines program of straight Bordeaux (Le Clos Secret), straight Sangiovese (Gran Premio), straight Syrah (Cimarone Reserve and 3CV) and Cabernet-Syrah blends (BANK and Cilla’s Blend).
We aim at the very best in vineyard management and wine making. Coastal Vineyard Care Associates are the pre-eminent high-level farming company in the California Central Coast. We farm using sustainable practices, target low yields and very high quality.
Estate Winery
Having made our initial 2006 and 2007 vintages offsite "custom crush" we decided we needed our own winery to gain full control and participation. We converted an existing horse barn into an elegant and efficient winery in time for the 2008 harvest. The 2,500 foot building can handle a 5,000 case harvest and comprises a tank room, barrel room and laboratory coupled with an extensive crush pad. This enables us to optimize quality by picking and crushing small lots as they ripen.
Our winery procedures are consistent with our small-lot handcrafted mission. We pass the Bordeaux and Sangiovese over a hand-sorting table, we punch-down in 1.5 ton open-top fermenters, we use French Oak barrels and we keep our barrel room very cool.
Our wine making goal is to produce very high quality wine using handcrafted techniques from estate grown fruit.
Our Story
What’s in a name? Perhaps more than anything it’s a dream: a dream of possibilities, of what something or someone might become. The dream of Cimarone Estate Wines started on a dreary London morning in 2000 when Roger revealed that he’d been dreaming of a little vineyard; the sun shone on verdant grape leaves and a tractor motored through the vines with a perfect puff of dust behind it. It wasn’t difficult to convince Cilla that a small vineyard in a sunny part of the world would be an ideal retirement plan; her childhood had been spent in Africa in the care of an ecologist father - the climate of a wine-growing region elicited feelings of home.
We set out to find to find the perfect piece of land for vineyard cultivation and for the realization of our dream. Veterans of Silicon Valley, we sought a more youthful and dynamic wine scene than that of the more mature Napa and Sonoma regions. In addition, Cilla’s academic work in physics, and our hi-tech careers made proximity to a university town a priority. Santa Barbara County quickly became a front-runner, and as we first crested the San Marcos Pass and took in the breathtaking panorama of the Santa Ynez Valley below, our fate was sealed. After walking countless properties, we were finally introduced to what would become Three Creek Vineyard. It possessed all the elements of an ideal vineyard locale: rocky, well-drained soils, steep hillsides, and south-facing slopes, all within the yet to be established Happy Canyon AVA of Santa Barbara wine country. Here we could plant and grow a superb vineyard utilizing low-yield, sustainable vineyard care.
As our Bordeaux and Rhône varieties matured and well-known winemakers clamored to purchase our grapes, we became intrigued with the notion of making our own wine and establishing our own label. Cimarone Estate Wines was born. What’s in a name? We’re afraid ours is quite simple: it’s the first two letters of our sons’ names and our names – Cilla, Mark, Roger, and Neal. But it’s also the realization of a dream.
Privacy
Your confidence and privacy is very important to us and your information will be treated with absolute discretion and security. We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others, with the following caveat: We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Web site.