Two presses. One destemmer. Countless barrels of grape juice.
At a 15,000-square-foot warehouse on Easy Street in Buellton, seven small-production winemakers share a custom crush facility. Many don’t have official tasting rooms, relying on wine club memberships and online sales for distribution.
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Altogether, the vintners who work at the facility have accumulated more than 50 years of experience. It’s not a glamorous site, but it gets the job done.
“It’s functional, and that’s what we need,” Karen Steinwachs said.
The 2025 harvest marked her entry into the Easy Street Wine Collective, the group that calls the warehouse their winemaking home. Steinwachs bottled her 2025 vintage at the facility in early December, yielding around 500 cases for her Seagrape Wine Company.
On Jan. 31 the collective is hosting its third annual open house at the crush facility, an event that features food, music, and wine tasting. The community will have a chance to get behind the scenes of their favorite wines and try new ones.
At the open house, Steinwachs will pour Seagrape’s sauvignon blanc, pinot noir, orange wine, and one lesser-known variety.
“Everybody looks at me like I’m a crazy woman, and I might be,” the winemaker said. “I hop a sauvignon blanc, so it’s a hopped wine.”
Her family’s history is lined with brewers, and there’s a saying in the wine industry that takes a lot of beer to make good wine. Picture a winemaker quenching their thirst with a cold beer after a hot, sticky harvest day, Steinwachs described.
The hoppy wine tastes like sauvignon blanc but with a different texture and the aroma of an IPA.
“It’s a weird, wonderful thing, and people either love it or they hate it,” she said.
It was 2001 when Steinwachs started in the wine industry, craving a break from her job in tech. While she was working for labels like Foley Estates and Buttonwood Farm Winery, she and her husband made their own wine on the side.
Ahead of her first open house with the collective, Steinwachs is looking forward to seeing all the winemakers there at once, which rarely happens.
“It’s going to be wonderful to have an afternoon to just enjoy each other’s company, eat some great food, and drink each other’s wine,” Steinwachs said.
Jason Scrymgeour, a winemaker and organizer of the open house, jumps at any opportunity to introduce wine tasters to labels they haven’t heard of before. Hosting the events at the crush facility showcases their “blue collar winemaking,” he added.
His wife, Melissa, the chef at their Clean Slate Wine Bar in Solvang, will make several types of flautas, which she created to pair with each winemaker’s samplings at the open house.
Scrymgeour has made his Bocce Ball Wine at the Buellton facility since 2018. He views it as an important space for independent winemakers because there aren’t many spots like it in the county.
“It was really Etienne’s vision to turn it into a custom crush facility,” Scrymgeour said of the building’s owner.
Etienne Terlinden acquired the space in 2010. It’s where he makes his label, Cordon of Santa Barbara, and wines for other clients. He uses grapes from all seven of the county’s appellations, specializing in French varieties. At the open house he’ll pour Cordon’s pinot noir and red blends.
“I started the collective to allow small, artisan winemakers to work on their craft and their passion, lowering the barrier to entry in the wine business,” Terlinden said.
Cordon started with just 60 cases of wine in 2001, and it now sits at around 1,000 cases. Terlinden likes being able to show open house guests what it takes to produce a nice wine and bottle it, from the perspective of local small wineries.
To Terlinden, wine is art for the palate, similar to paintings for the eyes or music for the ears, and it’s “pure joy” to drink.
“It’s basically artwork in a bottle,” Terlinden said. “That’s what really strikes me.”
Staff Writer Madison White is looking forward to trying Seagrape’s hopped wine. Ask her about it at mwhite@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in January 22 – January 29, 2026.