The decision to create a Cimarone winery on the same property as Three Creek Vineyard was a logical outcome of our strategy to couple the wine making with the farming and give us full control over the vines-to-wines process. Serendipitiously it also gives the fruit a short journey from vine to crush.

We converted a 2,500 sq. ft. five stall horse barn with a hay bay and a tack room designed originally in a Frank Lloyd Wright style. The horse stall area was used to create a barrel and fermentation room. This is fully insulated and refrigerated down to the high 50’s degrees Fahrenheit. The tack room has been converted into a laboratory and the high-ceilinged hay area is the new tank room. A large crush pad was added out back. Santa Barbara County has rigorous planning requirements relating to any commercial building which has resulted in a very safe, waste-water managed, well engineered, handicapped person friendly building.

Winery News

Winery People

Winery People
Consulting Winemaker

Winemaking is performed by Doug Margerum. Doug is the founder of the Wine Cask restaurants in Santa Barbara and Los Olivos. In 2000 Doug formed the Margerum Wine Company www.margerumwinecompany.com to make and market wines. In his own words:

The term being bantered around in France for what I am doing is a production called "garagiste" - though my space is smaller than a garage. The "garagiste" philosophy, for me, is that I am part of a growing group of vintners looking to return wine making to its previous form of production – hand-crafted and personal.

Wines produced by Doug repeatedly score highly and Robert Parker identified the 2004 Piocho wine he made for Happy Canyon Vineyards as the best Bordeaux blend to come out of Santa Barbara wine country.