Taste it yourself
To connect with Alban Vineyards or learn more about its educational tastings and seminars, visit albanvineyards.com or rakedranch.com. The only way to taste is to attend one of the winery’s Private Tasting Series dates, which are scheduled for April 10 and 17 and May 1, 2027. Check the website for updates. Visit Alban Vineyards on Instagram at @albanvineyards.
At Alban Vineyards in Arroyo Grande, winemaker John Alban is immersed in the daily grind of harvest season, covered in grape skins and yeast while monitoring daily operations.
He swapped his work clothes for formal attire to attend the 49th annual San Francisco Wine Auction at The Palace Hotel on Sept. 19, where The Guardsmen honored him as the 2026 Winemaker of the Year.
When Alban received the call announcing the recognition, the news took him by complete surprise.
“I got a phone call from this group asking if there was any chance I could be in San Francisco on Sept. 19,” he said. “They said, ‘Well, we want to give you this achievement award and recognition as a winemaker.’ Which really is a tribute to the whole team here, and I really think it’s a tribute to the whole county.”
Since founding Alban Vineyards in 1989, Alban has been celebrated as a driving force behind the Rhone Rangers movement, establishing the first winery dedicated to Rhone wines in California. And others followed suit.
“John is a visionary who saw an opportunity in California wine that others could not see,” auction nominating committee Chair Hal Davis said in press materials.
For 49 years, The Guardsmen, a Bay Area-based nonprofit, has raised money through the San Francisco Wine Auction and other events to fund more than 200 K-12 scholarships and send more than 2,000 underserved children to outdoor summer camps each year. The Winemaker of the Year award honors a vintner whose work and generosity advance the craft of winemaking and The Guardsmen’s mission.
“He importantly then had the conviction to see his vision through and to pave the way for a generation of American Rhone movement winemakers and growers, benefiting the whole community as a result,” Davis said.
Alban credits the local community, its winemakers, and growers for helping the area grow into a region recognized for making quality wines
“Alban Vineyards wouldn’t, in my opinion, be getting this recognition if it weren’t for all the other wineries that embraced this idea too, and then did it really well also,” Alban said. “It takes a critical mass, in some ways.”
Growing up in Long Beach, Alban didn’t come from a winemaking family. His father was a physician, and Alban assumed he would follow him into medicine. But as his father shared bottles with him during family dinners, Alban quietly fell in love with wine. By age 17, he began considering how to build a career in the wine trade.
At the time, California winemaking was almost exclusively focused on cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay.
“You’re basically making one out of two [grape varieties], right? There must be something we’re missing,” Alban said.
After college, Alban earned an apprenticeship in France’s Rhone Valley, immersing himself in traditional viticulture before returning to California to search for ideal coastal microclimates. He planted experimental test plots across Paso Robles’ Templeton Gap, the Edna Valley, Santa Rita Hills, and near Watsonville before acquiring property in the Edna Valley that matched the Rhone’s climate and soil.
“People come to this county for countless reasons,” Alban said. “Most people come here because it’s such a beautiful place to live, right? And it is a beautiful place. I didn’t even see that when I moved here. I was so focused on one thing.”
When Alban began planting syrah, grenache, and viognier, critics recognized how well-suited Rhone varieties were to the Central Coast’s cool climate. While Napa Valley was cemented in people’s minds as California’s Bordeaux region, the Central Coast became the “Rhone Zone.”
“It’s always been my opinion that no matter how great a cabernet you make in this state, if you’re not in Napa, you’ll always be second fiddle,” Alban said.
Inside the production facility, his winemaking relies on low yields, gentle handling, and meticulous sorting. During harvest, which arrived earlier than ever on record after the state’s intense March heat dome, Alban’s team uses a specialized stem sorter with a spiral-shaped array of paddles to knock berries loose.
Unlike many regional winemakers who include stems in their production, Alban Vineyards removes them for fermentation.
“We don’t use any stems in ours, which is another thing that’s unusual in this county,” Alban said. “Stem inclusion is huge, but you’ll see we fanatically remove every bit of it.”
Fruit passes through custom-built screens to filter out undersized berries before reaching an optical sorter equipped with high-speed cameras and air guns that blast away raisins or unwanted debris. The result is a collection of sorted berries that Alban described as “little perfect blueberries.”
Once sorted into open-top bins, the fruit rests for five to seven days before fermentation begins naturally. To wet the cap gently, the winery uses custom sprinkler devices attached to PVC lines, then presses red wines into oak barrels stored in cold warehouse rooms to age for nearly four years before bottling.
Because Alban Vineyards focuses on farming and production rather than hospitality, the winery does not offer public tastings or host public tours.
“It’s a whole other business; it’s a hospitality business,” Alban said. “We don’t really like to do anything that we’re not going to do at a super high level.”
To engage with wine enthusiasts, Alban launched a Private Wine Series three years ago, held at the adjacent Raked Ranch property. Hosted in a dedicated barn, these educational seminars and tastings bring together guest winemakers and serious collectors.
“It’s very educational, but it’s also really fun for people who are serious ‘cork dorks’ and want to really dive into wine,” Alban said.
Reflecting on his career and the recent San Francisco Wine Auction gala, Alban expressed deep gratitude for the contrasting worlds of winemaking, from dirt and farming to elegant celebrations.
“I always think it’s so wild that this product comes out of the ground and is farming at its highest level,” he said, “and then it gets enjoyed in some of the most glamorous and elegant circumstances imaginable.”
Reach contributor Sam Fickett at sfickett@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in October 1 – October 8, 2026.
