As two local vintners were recently putting the finishing touches on their new tasting room, the building shook for a moment.
“I just finished hanging all the stuff. I think that was the day before we opened,” said Lompoc-based vintner Mireia Taribó, who recalled the reverberating boom of a missile fired from Vandenberg Space Force Base sometime in February.
Luckily the framed artworks, accolades, and magazine clippings Taribó hung that day stayed put, and at least one more addition to the walls of Camins 2 Dreams’ new tasting room has been hung up since then—the ribbon from the venue’s official grand opening, held a few weeks after their soft opening.
Since 2017, Taribó and her wife and fellow winemaker, Tara Gomez, have been turning their winemaking dreams into reality, releasing grüner veltliner, gamay, carignan, and syrah for their Camins 2 Dreams label—camins means “paths” in Catalan.
“It was a great turnout; we were really happy about it,” Gomez said about the early March ribbon cutting event. “It was so great to have support from the community and other people in the wine industry that showed up and celebrated with us.”
The winemaking pair’s new tasting room is located in the Lompoc Wine Ghetto on Chestnut Court, next door to Flying Goat Cellars, and marks the third property Taribó and Gomez frequent on a regular basis.
The couple opened their first tasting room on North F Street in Lompoc in 2019, where they will continue to offer tastings by appointment only, as the new Chestnut Court location will take over as the brand’s main tasting room. Originally they’d purchased the new space for a different purpose.
“Just last year, we acquired this building, but it was mainly supposed to be for barrel storage,” Gomez said. “But it just happened to be here in the Wine Ghetto. So it made more sense, where there’s more foot traffic, to put a tasting room here. So this will be our main tasting room, and the one on F Street will be a secondary location.”
Camins 2 Dreams also has case storage at the Santa Rita Hills Wine Center in Lompoc, so Taribó and Gomez often find themselves traveling back and forth between their original tasting room and the Wine Center. They were driving that route like usual when they noticed the vacancy at the Wine Ghetto.
“One day we happened to drive by and saw that there was a space available for lease. So we just jumped on it—because we were already looking for a new space for six months,” Gomez said. “It’s so challenging here now because we have the cannabis industry that’s really growing and taking over a lot of the buildings here.”
Taribó and Gomez first met more than a decade ago while they were both working at J. Lohr Vineyards and Wines in Paso Robles. One of the many things the two winemakers have in common is they both became interested in wine at an early age.
For Gomez, her foray into wine started “with a love of science.” During elementary school, the Lompoc local knew she wanted to be a scientist someday. Her parents used to love wine tasting and touring different vineyards and wineries along the Central Coast, and would occasionally take her along.
“Back then, it was more allowable for kids to go on wine tours and stuff like that,” Gomez said. “That was how I found this science connection to wineries—by walking around, seeing the lab, seeing people in white lab coats doing titrations. That was my instant connection.”
Like her wife, Taribó also has a passion for science and studied chemistry before pursuing an additional degree in enology during college. She’d wanted to be a scientist when she grew up, but preferably not one confined to a lab environment. Winemaking had also intrigued Taribó—who was born and raised in Catalunya, Spain—since childhood, as wine was part of almost every meal in her family’s household and her parents often made their own wine.
“The thing about growing up in Spain is you always have wine around you,” Taribó said. “I knew early on that I wanted to pursue something that involved chemistry someday but something nature-related, where I could work outdoors and be active.
“That’s where winemaking came into place.”
Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood is raising a glass. Send comments to [email protected].
