Blair Fox Cellars
About
Blair Fox Cellars is an ultra-boutique winery. We are dedicated to producing small lot, handcrafted bottlings of exceptional quality Rhone varietal wines from the most premium vineyards.
Location Description
Located in the heart of the quaint, charming town of Los Olivos, California.
Features
- Grapes with beautiful concentration and intense varietal character.
Additional Information
- Meeting / Conference Facilities:
- Caves:
- Wedding Facilities:
- Picnic Facilities:
- Dog Friendly:
- Winery Tours:
- Wine Tasting:
- Art or Architecture:
- Organic / Biodynamic:
- Awards:
- Wine Club:
- Lodging / Bed & Breakfast:
Winemaker
After over three years of making award winning wines, he left the Santa Ynez area and traveled to the Rhone region of France for further investigation into these extraordinary wines. He found the regions of Cote Rotie, L’Hermitage and Condrieu to be of most interest. There he tasted some of the finest examples of Syrah and Viognier in the world! After this excursion, he returned to Santa Barbara only to be lured away once again. This time he became engulfed in the marvelous Shiraz of Australia. After becoming the Vintage Winemaker for Haselgrove Wines in McLaren Vale, South Australia he fell in love with the area, wines and people of Australia. This is where he learned to believe in “terroir” and taste the earth in the wine. After this international winemaking experience, Blair felt it was time once again to return home where he found employment with Fess Parker Winery as the Rhone Varietal Winemaker. In 2005, Blair was promoted to Head Winemaker at both Fess Parker Winery and Epiphany Cellars. Today he continues to craft superb Rhone varietal wines for his Blair Fox Cellars label.
Practices & Techniques
The Viognier and Vermentino grapes are hand sorted and whole-cluster pressed to preserve the fresh, floral, and fruity qualities of these amazing varietals. The juice is then fermented in older French oak barrels and a small percentage of stainless steel while preventing malo-lactic fermentation to promote bright, crisp acidity.
Estate Vineyards / AVA
The Paradise Road Vineyard is the eastern most vineyard in Santa Barbara County. It experiences a much warmer climate and located at a much higher elevation than most other Santa Barbara County vineyards and possesses red, iron rich, nutrient deprived soils. This results in tiny berries, small clusters and very concentrated flavors for both the Syrah and the Viognier varietals grown on this wonderful vineyard.
The Purisima Mountain Vineyard is located in the Ballard Canyon area of the Santa Ynez Valley. This vineyard is owned by the Beckmen family and produces some of the best Rhone varietals in Santa Barbara County. Most of this vineyard is grown on hillsides, in a Biodynamic manner, so a great amount of effort and expense is put forth to make sure the fruit is of the absolute highest quality.
Thompson Vineyard is located in Los Alamos off Alisos Canyon Rd. We were fortunate enough to contract fruit for 2007 and will continue to contract fruit for as long as possible. This vineyard produces some of the most beautiful and concentrated fruit I have ever worked with. My grapes come from the old section of the vineyard just down from Ojai and Jaffurs and just above Copain and Tensley.
Tierra Alta Vineyard is located a few hillsides over from Purisima Mountain in the Ballard Canyon area of the Santa Ynez Valley. The Syrah grapes from this vineyard are sourced from a very steep hillside block of Clone1 planted in shallow calcareous soils. This vineyard produces bright, concentrated wines with dark chocolate, white pepper and spice.
The Fox Family Vineyard is a small, organic vineyard in the hills of Los Olivos planted to Syrah, Grenache, Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, a small amount of Vermentino and farmed entirely by hand. This vineyard is planted on extreme hillsides with rocky, nutrient poor soils, perfect for quality grape growing. This is our estate vineyard and every vine is meticulously cared for!
Awards
Robert Parker has praised the label as saying "Blair Fox...fashions small lots of exceptionally high quality wines...most of these are very limited production cuvees, but they are unquestionably worthy of consumer interest." issue #184. He also notes "One of the more brilliant portfolios of Rhone Rangers I tasted on my tour of the Central Coast was that of Blair Fox...back-to-back vintages of great wines powerful, rich, concentrated, age worthy and impressively made." Issue #190
“This is a beautiful set of wines from Blair Fox, whose resume includes stints as head winemaker at Fess Parker and significant travels throughout the Rhone Valley. Fox planted his own vineyards in 2004 in Los Olivos and practices organic farming. It will be fascinating to see where these wines go from here. One thing is for sure, this lineup delivers considerable quality for the money.” Issue #196
Food and Wine Magazine, did a wonderful article on the Santa Barbara area in which our winery was included saying "...it is hard to quarrel with the quality of wines created by the winemaker Blair Fox under the Blair Fox Cellars label, one of the most exciting to debut in recent years. Fox makes big, rich, single-vineyard Syrahs, including one from the iron-rich soils of the noted Paradise Road vineyard, also the source for his zingy, peachy Viognier."