It’s a Sunday afternoon and cars are streaming down Buellton’s West Highway 246.
Some of them slow down to look at the newly erected “Ken Brown Wines” sign at the old California Highway Patrol building. The parking lot is filling up at 11 a.m. for the winery’s grand reopening.
Owner Byron Kent “Ken” Brown, a winemaker in the area since 1977, is inside mingling with his guests and pouring his own wines from behind the counter. One of the original wine pioneers of Santa Barbara County, and a founder at both Zaca Mesa (he even met his wife there—she was the tasting room manager) and Byron Wineries in Los Olivos, he is surprisingly modest considering his list of accomplishments and status as a veteran vintner.
Jarrod Bradley is one of the winery’s tasting room attendants. “[Brown] works with anyone and everyone,” Bradley said. “He’s sort of like one of the father figures in the area.”
Brown was the first to present the syrah, pinot gris, and pinot blanc grapes to Santa Barbara County. He was also one of the first winemakers to recognize the potential for pinot noir and chardonnay grapes to grow in the area’s cooler climate.
Brown said it’s not about the credentials when making wine, but rather the pursuit of a quality product.
“A winemaker has to have a desire to make the perfect wine,” he said. “But they also have to know that of all that they’ve made, none of them have ever been perfect. It’s all about keeping that passion.”
It was this passion and love that first drew Brown into the industry during a trip to Napa Valley in the late 1960s. He fell head-over-heels in love with wine and immediately decided he would leave behind his well-paying job at IBM.
“It’s all about the romance, right?” Brown said.
He enrolled in both viticulture (vineyard production) and enology (winemaking) at Fresno State, something that was almost unheard of at the time. Today, Brown spends a vast amount of time in the vineyards, which he said is why he’s so comfortable with the land and having experience there.
“Most winemakers just don’t have that background that I do in the vineyard,” he said. “To me, wine starts the day you plant the vineyard, and it ends the day the last bottle is consumed in the cellar.”
His appreciation of the land is partially what he attributes his winemaking philosophy to; although he knows it all comes down to him as the winemaker in the end.
“One hundred percent of the wine’s potential quality comes from the vineyard, until the second you pick the grapes,” Brown said. “Then 100 percent of the potential comes from the winery.”
Ken Brown Wines was founded in 2003 and was previously located at the Terravant Wine Center in Buellton, a custom winemaking facility that Brown adamantly believes is important in making quality wine. At Terravant, wineries take their grapes to be crushed, fermented, and bottled, which makes smaller scale production with cutting-edge facilities more economical.
“It’s a great place for production, but it felt more like an office building than … a tasting room,” Brown said. “We were at the mercy of Terravant’s hours, and people didn’t always want to plan out in advance when they wanted to come in to work with us.”
The new tasting room officially opened for tasting on Dec. 5, 2013, specializing in Brown’s iconic pinot noirs and chardonnays grown from both the Santa Rita Hills and Santa Maria Valley.
It’s in a prime location on one of Buellton’s main thoroughfares, and Brown couldn’t be happier.
“We had been looking for a couple of years on and off, but we wanted to find the right place,” he said. “I just had no idea that when we found it we would get this much exposure.”
Almost everyone who travels into Santa Barbara wine country goes down Highway 246.
“It’s been really busy almost every day, and the staff has been great,” he said. “I’m really happy with all the new changes we made.”
Located in a facility built in 1961, the tasting room underwent an extensive 2 1/2-month remodel before Brown deemed it fit for pouring for customers.
“We have a fairly long lease on the place so we decided to redo it all,” he said. “Everything is brand new now.”
Among these changes were the removal of two sub-ceilings, the installation of a new floor made from real wine cork, and adding a mixed-wood paneled bar. Large paintings and photographs by local artists cover the walls almost entirely, even though the tasting room has only been open for a couple of months.
Ken Brown Wines is located at 157 W. Highway 246 in Buellton, and it’s open Thursday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
For more information, call Ken Brown Wines at 688-9400, email them at info@kenbrownwines.com, or visit its website at kenbrownwines.com.
Intern Dora Saltzman wrote this week’s Biz Spotlight. Information should be sent to the Sun via fax, email, or mail.
This article appears in Feb 27 – Mar 6, 2014.