Wine Maker

Doug Margerum Bio from website-

I began my wine and food exploration at a young age, tasting wine in France and eating in France and Italy with my parents at 13 years of age. I worked in restaurants as a cook and server throughout my high school and college years. After graduating from UCSB with a degree in business economics my family purchased WINE CASK (an existing wine store, wine making & beer making supply store) in 1981. What began as retail wine store expanded to include a simple bistro adjacent to the existing wine store. The restaurant expanded to the “Gold Room” in Santa Barbara’s legendary El Paseo in 1991 and the adjacent Intermezzo cafe opened in 1996. The two restaurants and the wine store have become a destination of choice in Santa Barbara among food and wine cognoscenti locally and from throughout the world. Our cuisine and wine program was a combination of diverse influences I experienced in my long exploration of food and wine, the myriad of flavors from the world with California’s Asian/Mexican influences. This mix was the recipe for the creative, simple and refined food matched with appropriate wines in a congenial atmosphere. There was critical success from the outset with praise from Gourmet, Bon Appetite, and the Los Angeles Times. It was in 1994 that WINE CASK became one of 74 restaurants in the world to have the Wine Spectator Grand Award and has been awarded the Grand Award very year since. I decided to devote all of my energies to wine making and I sold the WINE CASK in June of 2007. Margerum Wine Company began as a tiny 240 square foot cold room behind Brander Vineyards in 2001. My philosophy is a return to wine making in its previous form of production – handcrafted and personal.

Margerum Wine Company currently produces three primary wines: • SYBARITE Sauvignon Blanc.. An amalgamation of all of the top Santa Barbara County Sauvignon Blanc vineyards we work with: McGinley Vineyard (AKA Westerly Vineyard), Vogelzang Vineyard, Purisima Mountain Vineyard, and Grassini Vineyard. • ÜBER Syrah. A co-fermentation of Syrah blended with selected barrels from the top Santa Barbara County Syrah vineyards, • M5. A blend of five Rhone Valley varieties (Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre, Counoise, and Cinsault) from twelve of the top vineyards in Santa Barbara County. Companion single vineyard wines are: a Pinot Gris from Alisos Vineyard, a Sauvignon Blanc from Vogelzang Vineyard, a variety of single vineyard Syrah’s and a distinctive Pinot Gris from our own vineyard in Washington State. All Margerum wines are available directly from the website and many of our wines are ONLY available from the website. called M5. I also produce the wine for Happy Canyon Vineyards - BARRACK wines, a luxury Cabernet Sauvignon called Ten~Goal and a elegant Merlot called Brand; PIOCHO which is a blend of Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot; and CHUKKER, a new approach to varietal Cabernet Franc. I am also the consulting wine maker for two new wine projects in the Santa Barbara County: • Cimarone. Classically styled wines made exclusively using estate grown grapes from the Higgins’ family owned Three Creek Vineyards located in the beautiful Happy Canyon region of the Santa Ynez Valley. Specializing in Bordeaux and Tuscan varietals. There is a companion estate grown Syrah called 3CV. • Cent’anne. A new vineyard panted to a variety of clones of Sangiovese located in the heart of the Santa Ynez. This small estate is dedicated to producing world class, old world, Sangiovese. Wine is Good Living!