There's a particular kind of California Sunday that no other place on earth can replicate — and it lives at the end of Santa Rosa Road, where the transverse valley of the Sta. Rita Hills funnels cold Pacific fog straight through some of the oldest Pinot Noir vines in Santa Barbara County. This is where it all began: in 1971, Richard Sanford and Michael Benedict planted the Sanford & Benedict Vineyard, the first vineyard in what would become the Sta. Rita Hills AVA — its own-rooted Pinot Noir vines now the oldest in the county. Three barrels of Pinot made in 1975 turned into a 1976 release that made the wine world sit up. Half a century later, Labor Day weekend 2026, I threw the kind of party this storied soil deserves: lawn between the vine rows, rosé sweating in ice buckets, laughter ricocheting off the golden hills. Today the winery sits inside the La Rinconada Vineyard — planted 1997, twenty blocks, twelve clones, a patchwork of sandy loam and diatomaceous earth — with a picnic area that might as well have been invented for Sundays like this one.
Two o'clock, and the lawn is already glowing. I'm in my white eyelet sundress — the backless one, because California in September demands it — barefoot in the grass, a glass of Sanford's 2024 Rosé of Pinot Noir doing that pale-coral shimmer thing rosé does when the sun hits it just right. Someone's playlist drifting from the tasting room, wicker baskets everywhere, a chorus of friends in linen and straw hats. I'm mid-laugh at a joke I definitely shouldn't repeat here, hem lifting in the ocean breeze that rolls in every afternoon like clockwork. This is the Sta. Rita Hills' secret — that wind, that fog, the reason these Pinot vines hold their nerve and their acidity. I'm simply following their example.
Every great party condenses into one perfect moment, and mine was this one. The 2020 Brut Rosé Sparkling came out of the ice bath — that deep copper-pink that only a few years of patience in the bottle earns — and I leaned in for the toast with my two favorite troublemakers. You're standing right beside me in this frame; I'm looking at you, glass raised, caught somewhere between the punchline and the clink. The low afternoon sun turned the bubbles into little prisms and turned us all a shade of gold. This is what sparkling wine is actually for — not celebrations, but inflation of ordinary moments until they glow.
By six, the party melted into its softest hour. The string lights blinked on above the picnic blanket as the sun dropped behind the vineyard rows, and I stretched out with the last glass of the day — the 2022 Sanford & Benedict Pinot Noir, the flagship from those 1971 own-rooted vines. Cool-climate Pinot at its most honest: bright cherry, forest floor, that saline snap the fog imparts. The cheese board was wreckage, the rose petals scattered, my hair a happy disaster. Perfect Sundays don't end; they just dim the lights.
💡 History note with love: Richard Sanford founded the winery in 1981; the winery complex at La Rinconada was completed in 2001, and Sanford has been part of the Terlato Wine Group since 2002 — but the soul of the place remains that audacious 1971 planting.
💋 You stayed until the string lights came on. I noticed. Next Sunday the suitcase opens somewhere new — and yes, there's a glass already reserved with your name on it. Guess where I'm jetting to... — Sofie
