Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
LANE TANNER
SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA WINEMAKER
PINOT NOIR WITH A WOMAN'S TOUCH
Interview Conducted by
Susan Goldstein
in 1994
Copyright © 2007 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.
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All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Lane Tanner, dated February 4, 1994. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Lane Tanner, “Santa Barbara, California Winemaker—Pinot Noir With A Woman's Touch,” conducted by Susan Goldstein. 1994, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2007
Copy No. ____ [Interview #1 1994]
Goldstein: [Tape cuts off introduction] Goldstein, and I’m interviewing Lane Tanner. When did you found your winery?
1-00:00:25 Tanner: Well, I founded my winery in 1989. Prior to that, I had a company, L.R. Consultants, a company which I started in 1984. I started making wine for one client—The Hitching Post restaurant. Basically, what I would do with them is I would make Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and they would come, decide how much they wanted of it, and then they would have that much and whatever I had left I would sell to Ken Brown and he would put it in his wines. So, it was really a fun deal, I just didn’t make very much money at it! But it was no stress so that was real nice. But—
1-00:01:06 Goldstein: I think it’s right next to you.
1-00:01:08 Tanner: I know! Yeah, I knew I brought it up. So anyway, during that time I was married to the owner of the Hitching Post, so I didn’t really need the money. That wasn’t a big thing. Then we got a divorce and I actually had to get a full-time job and start [unintelligible] and stuff, so I thought, “Hell, I’m already making wine, I love doing it, so why don’t I just change the label and continue doing what I’m doing?” So that’s exactly what I did. My first year, ’89, I started out with about 400 cases. And that barely got me by, and then the next year I went up to 600, and then in ’91 I had a total of 800 cases. That would be—actually, yeah—it was 600 cases of my Santa Barbara County and 200 cases of my Sanford and Benedict, and then this year, ’82, I’m up to 1,000 cases.
1-00:02:01 Goldstein: Oh!
1-00:02:01 Tanner: So, hopefully—this is horrible seeing me like, “I did this so I could make money”. I haven’t yet. [Laughs]
1-00:02:07 Goldstein: Really? Even though you keep growing?
1-00:02:08 Tanner: Yeah, because I keep growing, what happens is all the money I make, I just reinvest so that I can do more the next year. My goal is to get to 1,500 cases, which is actually what I picked in 1993. Of course that won’t be on the market for two years so hopefully within the next year or so I’ll actually be getting an income out of this. As it is right now, what I do is I make my living on consulting and odd jobs like that.
1-00:02:32 Goldstein: Okay.
1-00:02:33 Tanner: Analysis, things like that.
1-00:02:34 Goldstein: What do you do for people? What does that mean when you do consulting?
1-00:02:37 Tanner: Well, each job is different. Right now I’m consulting for Sausalito Canyon. And what I do is I just go up there, I taste his wines, I make sure they’re sound. In their case, they’re really good winemakers, it’s just he and his wife kind of hassle back and forth, they always worry that there are problems when there aren’t. You know, they just get kind of blinded to it. So basically, in that case, I’m just more holding their hand than anything, because they’re really good winemakers already. Another consulting job I had that I quit this last year was actually making wine for somebody. Overseeing the actual making of the wine, picking the style, doing the whole thing, getting the contract set up, doing it all and then just handing it over to the client at the end. So, you know, every consulting job is a little different.
1-00:03:29 Goldstein: Is that—do a lot of people do that in this industry? Is that an unusual job, or—
1-00:03:33 Tanner: Ah…not that unusual. There are quite a few people who consult.
1-00:03:36 Goldstein: Yeah. What’s your history? I know this is in the history sheet—
1-00:03:42 Tanner: No, that’s okay.
1-00:03:43 Goldstein: I’ll make you go through it a little bit. How did you come to where you are now?
1-00:03:45 Tanner: Well, I graduated with a degree in Chemistry from San Jose State. I went to work, first I went to work with a small environmental company that monitored air quality. So basically I started off doing a minor water chemistry and tower [erection] which was real interesting [laughs].
1-00:04:07 Goldstein: [Laughs]. 1-00:04:07 Tanner: And then, actually they were real fun years. I moved from that company to another larger environmental company, M.R.I. And over those years, it was real fun, I had a fully equipped airplane and a pilot and they would send me on jobs throughout the United States. For about a month I would check either, say, a pre-power site for the background or I’d check a power site that maybe was impinging on something. And fly around a lot and go home and crunch data. But I got to go to places, like I was on the North Slope for about a month, I was in a lot of different places in Alaska, real remote sites, one place where they actually float-planed you into this little island, dropped you off on a dock and then a helicopter came and picked you up off the dock and took you in, then. So I had some really fun times. But I got really tired of having no home life, having no boyfriends, you know, just being real unstable. It was just time, I wanted to do something in one spot.
1-00:05:13 Goldstein: Yeah.
1-00:05:14 Tanner: And especially when I ended up in Glendive, Montana. That was going to be like a four or five month job. I mean that just broke it [laughs]. The middle of winter, it was horrible.
1-00:05:22 Goldstein: Well, how did you get into wine?
1-00:05:23 Tanner: Well, what happened was I’m from Kelseyville, so my mom lives there still and when I quite air pollution I had no clue what I was going to do but I had a goodly amount of money, that was a nice thing, it was really lucrative. So I went up to Lake County and just started sleeping on mom’s couch and trying to think, “Well now what am I going to do?” And it was summer time so it was real fun. One day, the local winery, Konocti Winery, called her, wanted her to do some bottling, well she had gotten a full-time job. So I said, “Well you don’t know me but I’m Alice’s daughter and I’ll do bottling for a day, it sounds like fun.” So I went down there, did that, and it was fun. At that point, I had almost no background even in wine tasting. I mean, I basically drank brandy, some Petit Shiraz that were just gut-wrenchingly big, and then Champagne and that was it for me. So they had some labeling coming up. The woman that was doing their hand-labeling was going to work in the pears, which was much more lucrative, that was the other agricultural thing around there. So when the pear sheds opened she went to pack pears. So I took her job over for like three weeks or whatever it was. And then one day they found out I was a chemist, so they said, “Well, can you do some analysis?” And I said, “Shit, I can do any of that stuff”. So I said fine. I walk into the lab, I pick up the manual, you know, trying to figure out what’s what. And in comes Andre Tchelistcheff, the consultant at the time.
1-00:06:52 Goldstein: [Laughs]
1-00:06:53 Tanner: And [Bill Pease], I mean you could just tell Andre was really special, the way everybody was just like—
1-00:06:58 Goldstein: [Laughs]
1-00:07:00 Tanner: Bowing down to him, you know, not talking unless talked to, that kind of thing was really something. And he was the cutest little guy!
1-00:07:06 Goldstein: [Laughs]
1-00:07:07 Tanner: And so—[knock at the door]
1-00:07:08 Goldstein: Do you want to get that?
1-00:07:10 Tanner: Oh, did somebody knock? [Tape interrupts] Anyway, [Bill Pease] introduces me to this guy as the new enologist. I mean, I’m standing there, I have no clue even what this word means, much less that the whole thing was a lie [laughs]. And so I’m just standing there going, “Yeah, okay!”
1-00:07:29
Goldstein: “That’s what I am…” [laughs]
1-00:07:30 Tanner: You know? So it was really cool because then all day Andre had me taste wines with him. He would pour it and he’d make me smell it and go, “Can you smell this?” And I could! And he’d go, “Now can you taste this?” And the weirdest thing, it works out that I’ve always had a real problem with a real sensitive palate and a real sensitive nose which up until the wine industry was a problem because I’d go to Fisherman’s Wharf and I’d be vomiting from the smell when all the other kids are going, “Oh this is great!” [Laughs] so it was just like all of a sudden history in the making. It was perfect for me because I finally found something where I could use my senses to an advantage instead of always being at a disadvantage like walking in this house with the rats [laughs]. 1-00:08:14 Goldstein: And what a great mentor, I mean, to find—
1-00:08:17 Tanner: Oh, yeah! And we became real close friends and then I’d asked them to lay me off because I still wasn’t sure I wanted to be in the wine industry because I didn’t pick it, I wanted to pick something. So when they finally laid me off, Andre came to me and he says, “Lane, I implore you, you want to stay in the wine industry!”
1-00:08:36 Goldstein: [Laughs]
1-00:08:37 Tanner: And it was so funny because this was the first time I’d ever talked to him without someone else around, and I thought, “I shouldn’t be talking to him by myself”—
1-00:08:43 Goldstein: [Laughs]
1-00:08:43 Tanner: So I just started laughing hysterically, I couldn’t even answer the guy and [Bill Pease] walks over and quickly grabs him and takes him back to the other room and later on that day he comes back over and goes, “Lane, again, I implore you, do you want to stay in the wine industry?” And I just said, “Well sure, Andre!” [Laughs] I just couldn’t say no to the guy!
1-00:09:02 Goldstein: Uh-uh!
1-00:09:03 Tanner: So he got me an interview with Firestone, which was right at the time when Alison Green became winemaker and Tony Austin, who was winemaker there then, moved to start Austin Cellars. So I interviewed for Alison’s ex-job as enologist and I got it, so I moved from Kelseyville down here and that was the year 1980, I believe. Just about the last month of ’80, and I started working for Alison. At that time Firestone sucked. It was—
1-00:09:35 Goldstein: [Laughs] Was it pretty new then?
1-00:09:38 Tanner: No, it wasn’t new. But Alison, she was old enough to know better, but she was still a real daddy’s girl. So she was totally—how would you say it? She was totally controlled by Brooks, she had no clue as to her strengths, she was still mentally a real small woman. You know, and I’d been out in the world doing stuff and I mean, her idea of talking politics is saying what movie star she saw recently. I mean, the first few days I would just go and cry and think, “What have I gotten into, I feel like I’m in high school.” And then Brooks, what an odd guy that was, he would just treat you like a servant, he wouldn’t even make eye contact with you. I swear to god, I worked there for about a year—a little less than a year. I went through one crush with them and the last day that I worked there I’d started to be friends with Ken Brown, and he convinced me to go to Zaca Mesa and be his enologist. So the last day I worked at Firestone, I wore an evening gown to work, and Brooks Firestone had no clue who I was. He sat and had lunch with me. I swear to god, it was the first time he had ever talked to me, made any eye contact, and he was real sad to see me go. Yeah right, Brooks! [Laughs]
1-00:11:01 Goldstein: Oh, God. Did you learn stuff there? I mean do you feel like you learned stuff there?
1-00:11:06 Tanner: Oh, yeah! Oh definitely, I learned a lot there because what happened is Andre was still consulting for Firestone, too, so I still got to work under Andre. And it was real fun, I got to know Andre real well. He introduced me to the only royalty I’ve ever met—he introduced me to a French prince and then also, I was at his house up in Napa one time and he introduced me, he goes, “Lane I know how you love royalty, you have to come and meet my sister. She was a Russian czarina at one point before the big [ball].” So it was real fun, I got to work under him even longer so that helped me a lot. And just working in the industry no matter where, is a learning experience, definitely.
1-00:11:48 Goldstein: Did you go back and take classes? Specifically—
1-00:11:51 Tanner: No.
1-00:11:51 Goldstein: -So you were all on the job, kind of.
1-00:11:52 Tanner: Every now and then I would go up to Davis and take their weekend classes, you know they have those every now and then. So I did do a few of those just to get more involved in exactly how winemaking comes around and that type of thing. But in general I found myself more qualified for the winemaking than a lot of people around me that had gone through, like, the Davis or Fresno thing only because of my background, the strong chemistry background and I also have a real strong microbiological background. And with those, I understood more of what was happening in those tests than the people that just learned how to do the tests. I knew the exact reasons and that type of thing. And then with my practical experience in air pollution, I could do any kind of manual labor, and kind of electrical, working with pumps, none of that stuff bothered me whatsoever. So really I was well-rounded when I came into the industry. I had a perfect background for this industry. And, the really cool thing is, that I really like people and I love partying and as a scientist, you know, you go to a party and people kind of veer away from you. [Laughs] As a wine person it was like, boy, everybody loves you! So that was perfect for my personality too. So it really just worked in well, it actually did.
1-00:13:10 Goldstein: Yeah. What a great fit, yeah.
1-00:13:12 Tanner: Yeah, yeah.
1-00:13:13 Goldstein: So then you went over to—
1-00:13:15 Tanner: I went to Zaca Mesa at that point.
1-00:13:16 Goldstein: Okay. So that was, like, in ’82?
1-00:13:19 Tanner: That would have been in ’82, correct. Maybe the last month of ’81, but basically ’82.
1-00:13:26 Goldstein: Okay.
1-00:13:27 Tanner: And that was when Ken Brown was dating his wife, Deb—they’ve been married for quite a while—so we would party quite a bit together and have fun. It was real nice, Zaca Mesa was much more mellow, much more casual. Nice place to work, Ken was a real good person to work around. Um—
1-00:13:54 Goldstein: And you were the enologist?
1-00:13:55 Tanner: I was the enologist there, Ken Brown was the winemaker.
1-00:13:57 Goldstein: Okay.
1-00:13:58 Tanner: So that was how that laid out. Chuck Carlson worked there, at that time. He’d worked there forever until just recently. Now he works at Firestone. [Laughs] 1-00:14:09 Goldstein: Oh really? Everyone’s circling around the community.
1-00:14:12 Tanner: Right, the chronology of everybody going here, there, here, there. And then in ’84, Ken was going to go from Zaca Mesa, he was going to start his own winery, Byron Winery. That year I married Frank Ostini—
1-00:14:36 Goldstein: Of the Hitching Post, okay.
1-00:14:38 Tanner: The Hitching Post, right. And so everything happened kind of all at once. I started my own company at that point because—one of the reasons is that Frank had always wanted a special wine for his restaurant. At that time he only had one and he wanted something real special. He was an avid home winemaker and so he thought that would be just great if I started this business where I could make wine and he could help me and it would be “la la la”. [Laughs] You know, that kind of a thing. Of course, the first thing that happened was we got into a horrendous fight because he wanted to make the wine and I was like, “No, this isn’t going to work. You’re a great home winemaker let’s not get crazy about this idea.” [Laughs] Right at the same time that’s when Ken moved over to Byron and he wanted me to set up his lab and still be his enologist but he didn’t need a full-time one. So what I did was I traded him enology—you know doing his lab stuff—
1-00:15:30 Goldstein: At Byron?
1-00:15:30 Tanner: At Byron.
1-00:15:31 Goldstein: Okay.
1-00:15:32 Tanner: -In exchange for making my wine there. So it really worked out well. I did that up until the time Mondavi bought it and at that point they moved me out.
1-00:15:41 Goldstein: When did they buy it, just a year ago?
1-00:15:43 Tanner: They bought it, uh—no, that would have been in ’89.
1-00:15:46 Goldstein: Oh, I didn’t realize it was that long ago. Okay— 1-00:15:48 Tanner: Yeah, they bought it in ’89. No, no, that wouldn’t be—let me think. It might have been ’90. No, it was ’89 I’m pretty sure it was ’89.
1-00:15:59 Goldstein: Okay.
1-00:16:00 Tanner: Yeah. I can’t swear to it, though.
1-00:16:02 Goldstein: That’s okay. We’ll check our files! [Laughs]
1-00:16:06 Tanner: Yeah, right. [Laughs] Call the Mondavis. So at that point, I had to move my barrels out and I moved them to the Central Coast Wine Warehouse where they’ve pretty much been ever since. And, you know, as I said, Frank and I got a divorce six years later. So that’s ’84, that would be ’90…yeah, that sounds about right. So, you know [laughs].
1-00:16:36 Goldstein: Time flies.
1-00:16:37 Tanner: Yeah, it does, I’m even thinking maybe it was—I don’t know, did I get married in ’83? [Laughs]
1-00:16:43 Goldstein: [Laughs]
1-00:16:43 Tanner: But anyway, I’ve never been good with dates.
1-00:16:48 Goldstein: Well, I mean this just gives us a general sense. How does your operation work? You store your barrels at Central Coast—
1-00:16:54 Tanner: Well, it works different every year. My mode of operation, I’ve got to be very flexible because I don’t have a facility of my own. Basically—aw I hear that scratching on the wall [laughs]—basically what I do, is like last year, I made wine in four different places. Because the wine warehouse hasn’t been set up to actually make wine at that facility unless you make just a little tiny bit. So I was making wine at Talley, at Foxen, at Zaca Mesa and then I had to make a little bit of wine at the wine warehouse to get my bond going.
1-00:17:30 Goldstein: Mm-hmm. 1-00:17:30 Tanner: So it gets pretty crazy, just having all the timing set up and knowing who has what and where it is and what stage each bin is in at each winery. It’s been a real learning situation. It’s been real good because now once I do get going in one place it’s going to be so easy, it’ll be fun. [Laughs] But that’s what I’ve done is just basically find little places that will let me make a small amount of wine at their place and just use that.
1-00:17:56 Goldstein: And then you bottle there and do everything—
1-00:17:58 Tanner: Well, then what I do, is as soon as that’s—I take the, like, to Foxen here, I’ll bring the grapes over here, I’ve got my own fermenters. So I go through their crusher into my fermenter bins, it ferments, then I use their press, and then I get a flatbed with some porter tanks on it and I press directly into the porter tanks, drive them into the wine warehouse and then barrel down there. Then the wine stays there, they have a bottling line and they have a warehouse. So really, for the rest of its life it stays in the wine warehouse.
1-00:18:26 Goldstein: Okay. Where do your grapes come from?
1-00:18:28 Tanner: Ah, I deal with four different vineyards. The first one I ever dealt with is still probably my absolute favorite is the Sierra Madre vineyard. And it’s just a beautiful Pinot Noir, it’s always light and elegant and fruity. It’s just got some beautiful, beautiful qualities to it. I also get grapes from the Sanford & Benedict Vineyard. I started getting grapes there in 1985, so I was one of the very first people that got grapes there after the S & B label fell apart. And those were the two I started off with, basically. Then when I started making my own wine, I started realizing that the Sierra Madre [throws] a real light color every now and then. It’s still power-packed with flavors but the color isn’t there and I figured if I was making this wine for the public they just don’t understand Pinots enough to know that you don’t equate colors with flavors in Pinot Noirs. So I decided I would pick Bien Nacido vineyard because at that time it wasn’t very good grapes but it was always inky black. So I started buying Bien Nacido to blend in with my Sierra Madre and it turned out real good but then over the last few years, they’ve upgraded those vineyards so much that now they’re really wonderful grapes, too. So I’m actually upping my production of both of those, I’m going to break them apart again and start doing single vineyards. Then the last vineyard I worked with I just get a small amount from, it’s called Gold Coast vineyards and it’s in between Sierra Madre and Bien Nacido. It’s kind of on the same plateau as Sierra Madre. The reason I started doing that is because Sierra Madre’s for sale. And Dale Hampton planted this vineyard and suggested we start picking up grapes from that so that, if for any reason Sierra Madre sold and we couldn’t get grapes, we’d have an alternate place that’s fairly similar.
1-00:20:22 Goldstein: Uh-huh.
1-00:20:23 Tanner: So that’s why I’ve started picking that up. That vineyard has only produced two years. So it’s really too new to tell what the final flavor is going to be. It’s a nice flavor, they’re nice fruity, young, perky flavors at the moment but it will be interesting to see, you know, as it goes on, what—
1-00:20:38 Goldstein: What was that one called?
1-00:20:39 Tanner: Gold Coast vineyards.
1-00:20:40 Goldstein: And Dale planted that?
1-00:20:41 Tanner: Dale Hampton planted that. It’s owned by, well, Gold Coast farming. They do major amounts of farming in the area. They’ve got a big cooler and they can make [unintelligible].
1-00:20:53 Goldstein: What’s your philosophy of winemaking?
1-00:21:00 Tanner: Oh, hey, you want the page? [Laughs] Hold on, let me just get you the page and you can read it yourself.
1-00:21:04 Goldstein: Okay.
1-00:21:05 Tanner: [Laughs, tape interrupts] We make Pinot Noir. That’s all I make.
1-00:21:09 Goldstein: Okay.
1-00:21:09 Tanner: And that basically, really—
1-00:21:10 Goldstein: And why is that?
1-00:21:11 Tanner: Well, [in robot voice] Pinot Noir is my passion. No, the reason it is, is because you know, I have made other wines. It’s like, Chardonnay, it’s so easy. I mean, a three-year-old could make Chardonnay. There’s absolutely nothing to it. Most other wines are pretty much that way, too. The harder reds like the Cabernets and the Merlots are real manly wines. I mean you have to beat ‘em up, you have to really work them over before they really respond. Pinot Noir is just the opposite. It’s the most feminine of all the grapes and it’s the most difficult, too. It’s the most finicky and fickle. It’s like, you breathe on Pinot Noir wrong and you can ruin it. It really takes constant input to it—input not just by manipulation but by probably non- manipulation more than anything. You know, it responds to everything you do in such an incredible manner. You have to be incredibly careful with it. It’s one of those things that I’m doing, like a special project for Zaca Mesa right now, it’s the “Alumni Series.”
1-00:22:14 Goldstein: Oh, I heard about this.
1-00:22:14 Tanner: Right, and they bring us in and they do all the work, we just consult. Well, the other day, it’s time to rack the wine, definitely it’s time to rack it. I said well I’ll be in racking and he says, “Oh no, we’ll do for you.” And I said, “No, you can’t.” I mean that’s one of the big in the way I make my wine is that every step where the wine is touched at all, I do it. Because I know that if you even rack a Pinot at the wrong speed on a pump, you can ruin it.
1-00:22:42 Goldstein: Mm-hmm.
1-00:22:43 Tanner: I mean it’s that delicate, it needs that kind of kid-gloved kind of action. So there are just certain things that I won’t let anyone else do. When it comes to my wines, I do it all myself because of that. Because I know the exact response. If I get some air bubbles in the wine I know exactly what it’s going to do. It’s not one of those things you just want the guys to go, “Okay let’s rack it!” [makes pump noise] “Oh, there’s a lot of air!” [Laughs] Or just, you know, whiz at that pump so they’re just beating the shit out of it. It really responds to that stuff. And so, it’s more of a challenge than anything else.
1-00:23:14 Goldstein: Uh-huh:
1-00:23:15 Tanner: And so I feel more accomplished, I think, when I do it. I have to admit though, that it is nerve-wracking in a lot of ways. One of the things about style is that I don’t put very much new oak in it, and Pinot Noir shows changes more than any other wine I’ve ever seen. Pinot Noir goes through these changes where it goes up and down, just, you know, flavor and maturity wise. It’ll come out real fruity, I mean incredibly fruity and just be fabulous. And then, in about 6-8 months, it shuts down totally. I mean you open a bottle, and you’re going, “Why did I buy this? There’s nothing here.” And then about 3-4 months later it comes back out and it’s more mature, it’s lost some of the fruitiness and it’s starting to pick up some of those more interesting, older flavors. Then it slowly goes up from there. But you know, different times, different phases of its life, it’ll just have nothing to offer. And it’s not dead, it’s just going through a change.
1-00:24:19 Goldstein: It’s hibernating. [Laughs]
1-00:24:21 Tanner: Exactly, yeah! So the thing is, if you have a lot of new oak in a Pinot Noir when there’s no fruit, when it shuts down, at least you still have this oak-y flavor. So with my style it really is nerve-wracking because when mine shuts down there’s nothing because I don’t want oak there, I want the fruit to show. The nice thing is that my wines, when they age, are just awesome.
1-00:24:41 Goldstein: Yeah.
1-00:24:41 Tanner: They’re absolutely dynamic. And there is a case to be said that nobody ages wines anymore but I don’t care. [Laughs] You know? I’d rather make a really stellar wine that I know is going to be just incredible in ten years than just make something for the consumer. That’s why I’ve got to stay small because I’ll never be a mainstream winemaker. It just, it doesn’t— there’s no reason for me to do it. It’d lose the whole thing for me. I make these wines for me.
1-00:25:09 Goldstein: It’s a craft.
1-00:25:10 Tanner: It is, it really is. Unfortunately most wineries don’t have that option because they have the building, the overhead, they’ve got to cater to the public, they’ve got to make wines that sell, they’ve got to make lots of wines. You know, all of that stuff. And you know, you get into that route and then you become a mechanical person. Sure you’re still a winemaker, but you don’t get to play with the art itself. You either are so big that worker bees have to do all your work and you just sit there and write work orders, or you’re doing it all yourself but you’ve got to do so much of it that it’s not really fun anymore.
1-00:25:46 Goldstein: Uh-huh.
1-00:25:47 Tanner: So, I really am in a great niche and I’m just so lucky. If I could just make money…[laughs]. 1-00:25:53 Goldstein: Where do you sell your wine? How do you sell it?
1-00:25:56 Tanner: Um, I sell the majority—about 75% of it—in California. And within California, I sell about a third in the Los Angeles area, a third in Santa Barbara County itself, and a third in the Bay Area. Also, I sell small amounts, like 12-20 cases in about four or five other states: New York, New Jersey, D.C., Texas, and I just picked up Georgia. So, you know, but just little tiny bits because I really don’t have enough. But the nice thing about selling wine in other states is you get more write-ups. Because if you only sell in California, a lot of people won’t write about you. So that’s one of the key things to out-of-state sales. Plus, you know, as I grow it just makes the market easier. You know, because, if there’s a new fluctuation in the California market—which there has been recently with Southern California—I have other places I can go with it.
1-00:26:53 Goldstein: Fluctuations in terms of—
1-00:26:55 Tanner: Sales.
1-00:26:56 Goldstein: Oh, ok—
1-00:26:56 Tanner: Well, I mean any time you have a natural disaster or anything, sales in Southern California just go right down the tubes. [Laughs]
1-00:27:01 Goldstein: People didn’t like drinking wine after the earthquake [laughs].
1-00:27:04 Tanner: Oh! [Laughs]
1-00:27:05 Goldstein: Yeah.
1-00:27:06 Tanner: They’re not buying it at least, they’re probably drinking it but they’re not buying it.
1-00:27:08 Goldstein: Right, they’re drinking what they have.
1-00:27:09 Tanner: Mm-hmm.
1-00:27:10 Goldstein: So, you don’t have a tasting room? 1-00:27:14 Tanner: No, I don’t. I do use the new Los Olivos Wine and Spirits. They’re kind of my tasting room, I have a close affiliation with them, I’ve known Bob Senn forever and he promotes my product pretty heavily.
1-00:27:28 Goldstein: Okay.
1-00:27:28 Tanner: So that works out pretty good. But yeah, I don’ t have a place where I can go and have only my wines. I’ve thought about it every now and then, especially the [major Thompson] we have, you know, the vintner’s [vessel] and stuff, the little lemonade-like stand up—
1-00:27:41 Goldstein: [Laughs] By the road.
1-00:27:42 Tanner: [Laughs] Highly illegal, but hey, what the hell!
1-00:27:44 Goldstein: Two dollars a glass.
1-00:27:46 Tanner: Really! [Laughs]
1-00:27:46 Goldstein: That’d be funny.
1-00:27:48 Tanner: My little cases piled up behind me [laughs].
1-00:27:49 Goldstein: Yeah.
1-00:27:50 Tanner: But you know the only thing, too, is having only one product—Pinot Noir—it’s pretty funny during tastings because sometimes I’ll have the Sanford and Benedict which I only get a small amount of, but most the time I only have one wine to pour.
1-00:28:04 Goldstein: Uh-huh.
1-00:28:05 Tanner: You know, so they come over, you pour it, they like it, that’s good. They don’t like it, it’s like well, try the next booth! [Laughs] That’s all I have!
1-00:28:12 Goldstein: So you do all of those promotional things, though. 1-00:28:14 Tanner: Oh, yeah.
1-00:28:15 Goldstein: Okay. The wine industry, in general here in Santa Barbara County, is it distinctive?
1-00:28:23 Tanner: Distinctive? Yeah, generally it’s distinctive. I think one of the reasons being that up until just recently, almost all the winemakers in this area have started from working in barns and small buildings and are more interested in actually making the wine than the idea of actually owning a winery. Whereas you know, in most other places like Napa and Sonoma, those are places where you’ve got your lawyers walking in and buying huge mansions and going, “Well, let’s get a winemaker in here.” So coming from different directions. I think because of that, the camaraderie in this area is incredible. We all party together on a regular basis whether we’re doing wine stuff or no, we’re all interacting with each other. Not so much in the last two years, but definitely throughout the ’80s when we were all much smaller. Now all of us are on the road trying to promote our stuff.
1-00:29:21 Goldstein: Mm-hmm.
1-00:29:22 Tanner: But yeah, I think we’re much friendlier and happier as a group, we don’t see each other as major competitors because none of us make millions of cases. Now here again, you have to—I’m not talking about Cambria who just moved in recently and is huge. I don’t party with those people, I have nothing against them I just don’t know them. In general that’s the feeling of most Santa Barbara wineries is that we’re all kind of interrelated and part of one family versus working against each other.
1-00:29:52 Goldstein: Do you think it’s changed since you first got here? Do you see any changes happening?
1-00:29:55 Tanner: Oh yeah, sure. What’s different is that big-buck people are coming in.
1-00:29:59 Goldstein: They are?
1-00:30:00 Tanner: Yeah.
1-00:30:00 Goldstein: From Napa? From anywhere? 1-00:30:02 Tanner: Well, you know you have Cambria, Kendall-Jackson from San Francisco, you’ve got Beringer which is [wine world] for California and all the rest of the world, coming in and buying huge, huge pieces of our vineyards. You’ve got Cushman who, you know, is just a huge realtor coming in and buying Zaca Mesa as a toy. So—oh, yeah—Gus Parker putting up a huge monument to lousy wine. I mean, the guy doesn’t even have a winemaker but he’s got the best looking winery in the county. [Laughs] You know? Well, good, I’m glad his son now has a job but [laughs]—it has changed.
1-00:30:44 Goldstein: Yeah.
1-00:30:45 Tanner: You know it definitely has changed, but actually in reality there’s still the core of us who still party together and are still pretty much the same people.
1-00:30:57 Goldstein: Yeah.
1-00:30:57 Tanner: But I’ve seen the changes just in the last few years. And it’s going to get worse unless something really drastically happens to the wine market.
1-00:31:07 Goldstein: Yeah. What do you think about—maybe this ties into it—regulations, you know county regulations, state regulations, federal regulations?
1-00:31:17 Tanner: Well I feel like I’m being taxed to death, I’ll tell you! [Laughs]
1-00:31:21 Goldstein: That’s what everybody’s said, yeah.
1-00:31:23 Tanner: Yeah, it’s amazing the various fees, charges and taxes. I think the one I hate the worst— and I’m not even sure what it’s for or the exact name of it—I get taxed for my equipment once a year. Like, they tax me 1% of everything I own just arbitrarily. You write down what you own, they say, “Okay, how much is it worth? Okay now pay us 1%.” It’s like, “Why?! What is this?” So yeah, definitely, people with wineries I’m sure it’s even worse. I know the county was incredibly rough for a while there with putting any wineries in, but I think now that the slight governmental change locally has kind of helped that a bit. I think it’s a little cheaper to get a winery going now. But on the federal end, it’s always been about the same so that’s not—
1-00:32:11 [tape interrupts]
Goldstein: —people talked about, they thought the industry should expand here or stay how it was. People had different opinions about that—
1-00:32:31 Tanner: Uh-huh
1-00:32:31 Goldstein: -with the county letting people in.
1-00:32:32 Tanner: Well you know, it’s going to grow, it’s not going to stay how it is. Because this area is just too incredible for grapes. It’s just a natural thing that happens—I mean, when you find a gold mine do you leave it there or do you start mining for gold? So it will happen, this is going to be a bigger and bigger area as far as wine goes. It’s kind of interesting just because, like when I first got here, wine was nothing here. Really, there was just barely anything happening. And by the mid-‘80s we all were enjoying making wine but nobody else in the world knew about us. Now, it’s like fourteen years later, people are just going, “Wow, check this out.” Which seems like a long time for people to finally recognize something but I guess not. So yeah, it will accelerate I figure it’ll be semi-logarithmic now that we’ve been seen as a good area. You already see it, you’re already seeing the money coming in and it’s just going to keep happening.
1-00:33:44 Goldstein: But do you see on the weekends, I mean are these roads packed with people visiting wineries with that changing?
1-00:33:48 Tanner: Yeah, the last four years I’ve been living here right on the road! [Laughs]
1-00:33:52 Goldstein: Yeah, right, you would really notice it here.
1-00:33:53 Tanner: No, this right here is normal. Nothing. I mean, zip. You get a few cows and a few farmers and of course the mail guy. And of course he doesn’t even come this far so it’s the paper guy, actually. And then on the weekends, yeah. It’s—
1-00:34:08 Goldstein: Boom.
1-00:34:09 Tanner: Certain weekends, definitely during the springtime, it’s really packed with the bicyclists and the cars. This is a major bicycle route now, too. 1-00:34:17 Goldstein: Great bike ride.
1-00:34:18 Tanner: Yeah.
1-00:34:18 Goldstein: Now that you say that.
1-00:34:20 Tanner: Yeah, as a local I hate them. [Laughs]
1-00:34:22 Goldstein: Oh, okay! [Laughs]
1-00:34:24 Tanner: If you’re polite, that’s fine but some of these bikers just get in the road and think they own it! That drives me nuts. But—
1-00:34:30 Goldstein: Yeah.
1-00:34:30 Tanner: -yeah, it’s gotten busier and busier, there’s no doubt there. It’s obvious, and that comes with finally getting written up enough to where the people in Los Angeles go, “Hey, look at this.” It’s like the people in San Francisco go to Napa, well fine, the people in Los Angeles are coming here.
1-00:34:50 Goldstein: Yeah.
1-00:34:50 Tanner: But it took them 14 years. Maybe 12 or 13, before there was enough press written about the area and enough proof that we were making great wines before people would actually start coming over.
1-00:35:01 Goldstein: Right. Right. How many people work for you?
1-00:35:05 Tanner: Me, myself and I.
1-00:35:06 Goldstein: Okay.
1-00:35:07 Tanner: The thing is, if I hire anybody the paperwork triple-quadruples. It’s so expensive to have a worker bee, not just hourly wages but you have to do that workman’s comp, there’s supposed to be all of that shit. So it just doesn’t make sense, and that’s another reason I want to stay at 1500. At 1500 cases, I can still do it all myself. And that’s what I want to do, I want to be self-sufficient in the whole thing and just rely on myself to do it. Because as I say, I don’t want worker bees touching my wine. [Laughs]
1-00:35:35 Goldstein: Well when people, when you get your grapes from the vineyard, do you say to them, “I want these hand-picked or machine-picked.” Do you have a say in all of that process?
1-00:35:43 Tanner: Oh yeah, sure, sure. Matter of fact, I even have—each vineyard that I work with, I have specific rows. Well first off, you have blocs. You have a huge vineyard and then you have blocs. And then, most of the people just go, “This is the bloc I want my grapes out of.” Well I do such a small amount that a bloc could be 10-20 acres. There’s a lot of variation within a bloc. So all of my contracts I have actual rows within the bloc so that I know exactly where my grapes are coming from. I go in there, I can see if they’ve pruned the way I want them to, see if they’ve picked the way I want them to. I can check the exact numbers as it starts getting ripe, so I have total control of the rows that I deal with and yes, they’re definitely all hand-picked. Up to a few years ago I would actually go out and ride the gondolas and clean the grapes. But now, all the vineyards have really upgraded the whole thing and they have cleaner bees that do that, and they do a real good job so I don’t have to do that anymore which is nice.
1-00:36:43 Goldstein: Mm-hmm.
1-00:36:44 Tanner: Because it wasn’t really the most fun job. [Laughs] But yeah, in general I have total control over exactly where my grapes come from.
1-00:36:54 Goldstein: What about some of these new trends towards organic grapes or not filtering wine?
1-00:36:59 Tanner: Well you know, my trend has always been the same. I’ve never fined my wines. My wines are unfined and very loosely filtered—what I call [rock and frog], which basically just means you take the fruit flies and stuff out of it before you put it in the bottle. So it’s about as organic as it can get. But you know, fining and filtration, heck, they’ve been around since winemaking. In the dark ages they used ox blood to fine wines.
1-00:37:25 Goldstein: They did?
1-00:37:26 Tanner: Yeah. 1-00:37:27 Goldstein: Wow.
1-00:37:27 Tanner: So, you know that part of winemaking has always been there. There’s no big jump back, the big thing is hype. Whatever you come out with, you hype it. That’s what I’m doing [laughs].
1-00:37:41 Goldstein: [Laughs]
1-00:37:42 Tanner: So I mean these big corporations are saying, “Oh yeah, we’re doing something really unusual!” I say yeah, that’s hype [laughs]. It could be the same thing they’d been doing the last 10 years but they just realized right now that people want to hear something so they throw it out.
1-00:37:55 Goldstein: Right. “New and improved” way.
1-00:37:57 Tanner: Right. “New and improved” old way [laughs]. Yeah, you know winemaking is—grapes want to become wine. That’s the real key, my job is more like a “keeper of the grapes” than actually “winemaker”. All I do is keep it in a path that will be healthy and happy.
1-00:38:18 Goldstein: Uh-huh.
1-00:38:18 Tanner: But the grapes themselves are the ones doing the work. If there’s a problem I attack it but what I try to do is guide it so that there never is a problem. That, to me, is the real key to Pinot Noir-making. Because once you fiddle with Pinot Noir—if you get a problem and have to fix it—you shorten the lifespan on your Pinot Noir, no matter what you do to it and no matter how careful you do it. It just shortens the lifespan. It shows up somewhere down the line. So, you know, my key is that I get it into the barrel, it tells me when it wants to be racked, you smell it and it’s just like, “This is it, I wanted to rack it now,” it tells me when it wants to be bottled, it’s never the same. I’m sorry for those people that have huge wineries that have to have a schedule where they’ve got to bottle it this month or this year every year because it’s not like that, the grapes are different every year. It’s just one of those things. My 1985 Sierra Madre Pinot Noir was so [ripe] and so insipid that I actually failed. I actually bottled it in March of the following year which was almost no time at all. It was just this light, fruity wine, it was an okay wine. Today, it’s one of the most gorgeous wines you can imagine.
1-00:39:31 Goldstein: Really? 1-00:39:31 Tanner: But it took it that long.
1-00:39:33 Goldstein: Now did you know, were you confident that would happen?
1-00:39:35 Tanner: No, I just thought, “Boy this is a lousy year. There’s nothing this wine’s going to do in the barrel.” I could tell that much, but I couldn’t tell how it was going to age.
1-00:39:44 Goldstein: So at times you’re surprised, I mean, you don’t know—
1-00:39:46 Tanner: Oh, no, I just know that if I follow this path—
1-00:39:49 Goldstein: -Yeah.
1-00:39:49 Tanner: It will be good. But that doesn’t mean every year I feel confident that it is going to be good.
1-00:39:55 Goldstein: Yeah.
1-00:39:56 Tanner: You know, it’s a lot of surprises in a lot of ways but they’ve always been positive surprises. Sometimes when I worry about it I just think, “Don’t worry about it, it’ll be okay,” and it always has been. Yeah, so I don’t worry about that.
1-00:40:12 Goldstein: How is it being a woman in this industry where there are more men?
1-00:40:15 Tanner: Well you know, there are a lot fewer men than there were in the air pollution industry! [Laughs]
1-00:40:20 Goldstein: Well, that’s true! [Laughs]
1-00:40:22 Tanner: See, all of my adult career I’ve been in a male-dominated industry and this one is much more social. So I don’t have any problem with it because I’m a very physical person. You know, I’m not dainty unless I have to be. And when I need to I can throw on makeup and a push-up bra and have a little advantage over those guys. So you know I [laughs]—
1-00:40:44 Goldstein: [Laughs] 1-00:40:44 Tanner: -I see it as positive. Being a woman, there’s nothing in one industry that is so physical that a woman couldn’t do it. That it would take a man’s strength. As far as intelligence, there’s no difference there. You know, once you’ve proved that you’re not a wimpy chick, [laughs], the guys treat you like one of the guys.
1-00:41:06 Goldstein: So you get respect, it’s not an issue.
1-00:41:08 Tanner: Oh yeah, yeah. And we do sexual banter, you know, so they don’t feel like they’ve got to watch their mouths when I’m around or anything. So I am just one of the guys in that sense.
1-00:41:18 Goldstein: Are there more women coming into the industry? Do you have any sense of that?
1-00:41:23 Tanner: Um, there is a goodly amount of women in the industry, I don’t know what the percentage is. But you know, you’ve got—[woman interrupts on sound system]—what were we talking about? Oh, women in the—
1-00:41:40 Goldstein: Women in the industry [laughs].
1-00:41:41 Tanner: [Laughs] Yeah, there is a goodly number, but definitely there are a lot more men. There’s no doubt in that. And most of the time when women get into it, it seems like they get into it starting as an enologist—you know, the science part of it—instead of starting as a grungy worker bee.
1-00:42:01 Goldstein: Mm-hmm.
1-00:42:02 Tanner: But it’s definitely a good profession for either men or women, there’s no doubt there. And I think, this could be bias, but I think women have better senses of smell. So I think women may have a slight edge there but every person’s different so I don’t know if that’s—I think in general with the huge population that would be true but for the few people that go into this industry I don’t know if that would be true or not.
1-00:42:24 Goldstein: So you could have gone into the perfume industry or the wine industry [laughs].
1-00:42:28 Tanner: You know, I always considered that, “If I drop out of this, that’ll be the next thing I go into is perfume.” 1-00:42:31 Goldstein: You’d probably be good at that, too.
1-00:42:32 Tanner: Yeah, it would be real fun. Yeah.
1-00:42:34 Goldstein: I mean, they have sniffers for that.
1-00:42:36 Tanner: Yeah! Try to remember 200 different scents—I think it’d be really fun.
1-00:42:40 Goldstein: Yeah. Do you have any comments on claims about wine and personal health or how wine is used in our culture?
1-00:42:47 Tanner: Well, you know, since I’ve been drinking wine, I’ve felt much healthier but you have to remember I used to drink brandy [laughs]. But you know, personal health, I think it’s more psychological but there is some wine— downtown, I think people would just have a glass of wine after work, definitely I think that’s fairly healthy as far as stopping heart attacks or lowering your cholesterol or anything. You know, they have studies there but I couldn’t prove it one way or another with my own health. In general, it is a healthy beverage, it really is. I don’t have killer hangovers from wine. One thing I have noticed, though, now this is really odd and is one of those things I know but I don’t know why—my menstrual cramps are much worse since I’ve been in the wine industry and I have no clue why that is. But I went from absolutely never having any pain to actually having cramps. I don’t know if there’s a tannin buildup in your body that may react, I don’t—
1-00:43:50 Goldstein: That’s interesting.
1-00:43:50 Tanner: -I don’t know the chemistry but I know it’s there and I know there’s some interrelated link.
1-00:43:54 Goldstein: I wonder if there have been any studies done?
1-00:43:56 Tanner: Probably not because I bet nobody’s ever mentioned it before! [Laughs] But it’s true, I mean there was a marked difference.
1-00:44:04 Goldstein: Unless it’s stress.
1-00:44:05 Tanner: Oh, I’ve been in high-stress jobs. 1-00:44:07 Goldstein: Before this?
1-00:44:08 Tanner: Yeah, this isn’t as stressful as being in an airplane and doing, you know, millions of dollars per second and screwing up one of your instruments. [Laughs]
1-00:44:15 Goldstein: Yeah, yeah I can see that.
1-00:44:17 Tanner: Yeah there’s more stress there, I’ll tell you.
1-00:44:19 Goldstein: Ugh. I’m trying to think what else. That’s kind of most of these questions!
1-00:44:25 Tanner: Uh-huh.
1-00:44:26 Goldstein: Um, do you have anything else you want to talk about?
1-00:44:29 Tanner: Gosh—
1-00:44:31 Goldstein: Anything more about the county? Santa Barbara County or the industry here? Do you guys get together and talk wine and network?
1-00:44:41 Tanner: Yeah, well with the Sanford and Benedict thing, there are six of us involved, we get together for meetings once or twice a year which are always [real party] meetings. And then New Year’s Eve, the majority of us get together and party together. Whenever we party together you automatically talk about wine, it’s not that you’re talking business, it’s just that you’re talking your life. Because being in the wine industry it is totally what your life is, it’s totally interrelated. Your social work, everything that you—
1-00:45:14 Goldstein: You live out here among the vineyards—
1-00:45:16 Tanner: -it’s related to wine, everything you do is somehow related to the wine industry so you’d never not talk about work but it never sounds boring, dull things. It’s like, “[When] did you have this [wine]?” “Well what do you think of this?” “How are you selling in Atlanta?” You know? [Laughs]
1-00:45:30 Goldstein: Uh-huh. 1-00:45:31 Tanner: Or you know, I just came back from New York and you talk about the Opera and whatnot and then the restaurants you went to and—
1-00:45:37 Goldstein: And then the wines [laughs].
1-00:45:38 Tanner: -Yeah, and the wines you had at the restaurants and who was on the list [laughs].
1-00:45:40 Goldstein: Right. Right.
1-00:45:41 Tanner: So yeah, you’re always talking about it, you don’t get away from it.
1-00:45:45 Goldstein: Can you think of anybody else we should interview for the project? We’re interviewing people who have wineries and make wine, but is there anybody—I mean, Dale Hampton was a name that came up.
1-00:45:54 Tanner: Oh, yeah. Dale for sure, he’s a major name. Um—
1-00:45:57 Goldstein: [Jack Newton] was another name.
1-00:45:59 Tanner: [Jack Newton] is good. Well, the Miller brothers, they’re the ones that own Bien Nacido, they’re interesting people. Definitely, you could talk to them. Who else in the industry? Gosh, you got me off-guard on that, I’m sure there’s a lot of people if I would think about it—
1-00:46:22 Goldstein: Or someone going back, who was involved but isn’t anymore? To get back at some of the stuff in the ‘60s and ‘70s that’s sort of happening?
1-00:46:29 Tanner: Yeah, was there anything happening in the ‘60s in this area? I don’t know—
1-00:46:34 Goldstein: I guess it only started in the ‘70s.
1-00:46:35 Tanner: It really did, yeah.
1-00:46:36 Goldstein: People started switching crops over to grapes. 1-00:46:39 Tanner: God, you could talk to Michael Benedict but that’d be a scary interview. [Laughs]
1-00:46:43 Goldstein: Does he still live here?
1-00:46:45 Tanner: I don’t know, I think he does but I can’t swear to it.
1-00:46:48 Goldstein: Well we’re doing Sanford, so we’ll get all that from him—
1-00:46:50 Tanner: Yeah, whoa! Get those two together, that’d be real good [laughs].
1-00:46:53 Goldstein: [Laughs] Some fireworks.
1-00:46:55 Tanner: They hate each other’s guts. It’s so funny.
1-00:46:57 Goldstein: Are there any other bad stories like that, I’m not trying to dig up dirt but is there—
1-00:47:01 Tanner: Well I could tell you some great, scandalous stories but I don’t think we should. [Laughs] At least not on tape!
1-00:47:07 Goldstein: Right. Right.
1-00:47:08 Tanner: But gosh, you know, with human interaction you’re always going to have some pretty interesting stories, there’s no doubt. But—
1-00:47:19 Goldstein: Let me pause it now—[tape cuts off].