In this Wine For Normal People episode, Lane Tanner, the “Pinot Czarina of Santa Barbara County,” shares her journey and the art of crafting exceptional wines at Lumen Wines. She discusses the unique terroir of Santa Barbara, sustainable winemaking, and what sets Lumen Wines apart in California’s wine scene.
No two grains of sand are alike – or so a geologist will tell you – and the same goes for fistfuls. Take, for example, a microscopic photograph of grains of sand. What we believe to be a uniform substance (silica, just like the dictionary tells us), is in fact a random conglomeration of particles…
I have a confession to make: my favorite wine was once White Zinfandel. As a young twenty-something, I was not what one would consider a serious wine drinker: my favorite was a sweet, pink wine that once had a whole section on grocery store shelves. My father, who was in the wine industry, must have…
Who says wineries don’t still foot stomp their grapes? Our Grenache fruit came in today from Santa Barbara Highlands Vineyard, the last fruit of the season for Lumen! The berries looked beautiful, and after they went through the de-stemmer there was literally no free run juice – like three tons of sticky ball bearings. This…
Why Smaller Can Sometimes Be Better The quality of a wine is not always dictated by the sweetness of the juice. Many winemakers make decisions on when to pick by simply measuring the degrees brix (percentage of sugar) in their grapes, and generally pick when the sugars are at their highest possible level. Lane and…
Why Getting Old Isn’t That Bad There aren’t many things in life that get better with age. Cars lose thousands in value once they drive off the lot. Houses get termites. And food? It eventually gets moldy. Wine, in this regard, is almost in a class by itself. The history behind wine and its aging…
Some of the greatest discoveries of mankind were made by accident. Perhaps the best known (and beneficial) was made by scientist Dr. Alexander Fleming, who went on vacation for a few weeks and returned to see that his petri dishes had overgrown with mold. His discovery: penicillin. Other examples of benign errors include potato chips,…