Looking back on his youth, one local winemaker recalls fond memories of exploring his grandfather’s wine cellar—but not for the reasons some might expect.
“The cellar was pretty vast and it was below the house, so we’d hide there during hide and seek,” said Etienne Terlinden, owner and founder of Cordon of Santa Barbara.
Between the ages of 8 and 17, Terlinden spent every summer break at his grandparents’ countryside house in Belgium. As he got older, he began to share his grandfather’s interest in wine, admiring the variety of labels and producers collected in the aforementioned cellar.
Terlinden’s eventual foray into the wine industry started a bit later, in Santa Barbara during his college years, he said.
“I worked at a wine shop called Wine Time. Back then, you could count on your fingers the amount of wineries in Santa Barbara County,” said Terlinden, who gradually moved his way up from there, from working directly for a winemaker at a vineyard to becoming a winemaker himself.
In 2001, Terlinden launched his own label, Cordon of Santa Barbara, based at a custom crush facility in Buellton—where he crafts his wines using grapes sourced from throughout Santa Barbara County. Some of his most popular, locally produced wines include chardonnay, sourced from the Santa Maria Valley; pinot noir, sourced from the Sta. Rita Hills; and sauvignon blanc, sourced from Happy Canyon.
Terlinden proudly referred to Cordon’s wines as “an expression of this geography,” thanks to Santa Barbara County’s diverse variety of microclimates.
“Our wines are really reflective of the region,” Terlinden said. “We have some very nice, bright, acidic wines, and then we also have some lush, round, tannic wines.”
Jamie Edlin, communications director at Cordon of Santa Barbara, described Terlinden’s wines as displaying a certain Old World sensibility and simplicity.
“None of them are big, overblown wines. They all have a certain grace and restraint,” Edlin said. “You can taste the layers. You can taste the nuances. None of the wines will hit you over the head with a two-by-four. They’re really beautifully balanced, very expressive.”
While Terlinden’s crush facility in Buellton does include a tasting area, open by appointment only, the local vintner and his team had always hoped to open an official tasting room someday.
“We’ve been flirting with the idea of a dedicated tasting room for a long time,” said Edlin, who’s worked with Terlinden for more than a decade.
At the end of November, the Cordon team celebrated the grand opening of the label’s first tasting room, in the heart of downtown Solvang. The new venue is located in the recently renovated PARc Place plaza, where several businesses share a large patio—perfect for hosting collaborative events between neighbors, Edlin explained.
“Now that we’re all right here, we’re going to create a courtyard community, where we can collaborate on holiday parties, musicians, singers, right here in the middle of the courtyard,” Edlin said.
Aside from teaming up with businesses next door and across the patio for special events, the new tasting room will also function as a year-round collaborative effort within its own walls. Every six weeks or so, the tasting room will showcase a different local artist.
Terlinden described this combination of the visual and the quaffable as pairing “art for the eyes” with “art for the palate.”
“I had a longtime fantasy, as did Etienne, of a gallery,” Edlin said. “It seemed like a great way to decorate our walls, a great way to cross-promote both the wines and the artists.”
Cordon’s first featured artist is Alexandra Yakutis, whose watercolor paintings and multimedia works are currently on display in the tasting room. Both Yakutis’ abstract and realistic pieces often express her love of nature, particularly shorelines and trees.
Even if the promise of art and wine doesn’t draw potential tasters into the venue, Edlin said visitors probably won’t be able to resist hopping over to see the tasting room’s rescue dog, Oliver, a purebred golden retriever.
“He’s a retriever, because we put him out in the courtyard and [he] retrieves people, hopefully to the tasting room,” Edlin said.
Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood wants to give a loving shout-out to his family’s golden retriever, Seymour. Send comments to cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 23-30, 2021.