1294 COAST VILLAGE ROAD
MONTECITO
805.694.8086
FOLDEDHILLS.COM
Given the amount of wine tasting available around Santa Barbara, it’s a little surprising that Folded Hills, which opened at the corner of Coast Village Road and Olive Mill Road last April, is the first ever - and still the only - tasting room in Montecito.
The cozy, comfortable, welcoming space has since become a magnet for locals, who stop in after work, after the beach, before a movie or while waiting for a table at a local restaurant, and for visitors, especially those staying at the Montecito Inn across the street, or the nearby Biltmore, Miramar or San Ysidro Ranch hotels.
In their unpretentious, pet-friendly setting, proprietors Kim and Andy Busch - of the St. Louis brewing family - offer estate-grown wines from their cool-weather vineyards up the coast, the southernmost plantings in the Santa Ynez Valley. Knowledgeable staff pour the family’s boutique wines, which include a collection of six fresh, light “heritage” Rhône varietals (white, rosé and red; each with a multi-generational family name); several reserve wines, including a few Syrah varietals and an estate Grenache; plus a quickly sold-out “Lilly” sparkling wine.
Winemaker Angela Osborne, whom Kim refers to as “the guru of grenache” (she has dedicated her winemaking life to the grape), makes French-style wines that have a light touch and are true expressions of the local terroir. The grapes are crushed by foot, and the wines are made with exactly none of the 76 commercial additives that a bottle of wine may legally contain. And while sulfites may be legally present at levels up to 356 parts per million (ppm), no Folded Hills wine has more than 18 ppm, and most are from 5 to 12 ppm.
They also make a Beaujolais-style carbonic (whole-cluster) wine, but with a difference. In France, the grapes are picked in August and then heavily manipulated to be made into pourable wines in time for the November Beaujolais release. The Busches eschew additives, waiting until November and then another full year, before releasing their smooth, light, lovely Beaujolais equivalent.
“Here at the tasting room, we’ve brought a bit of the ranch to Montecito to introduce it and the Folded Hills brand, knowing that people who pop in here might not otherwise find their way to the winery,” says Kim, even though it is just a forty-minute drive away just off the 101. “So, they come in here and maybe buy some wine or get more interested and then find their way to the estate tasting room at the winery.”
