Justin Willett

The Path

Those years established a working fluency in cellar routine and decision-making, and they also set up a career that would become closely tied to Santa Barbara County. In 2005, he founded Tyler Winery in Lompoc and took on founder, owner, and winemaker at once. The title marks the structure; the work behind it is cumulative, moving from vineyard judgment to cellar adjustment to the patience required to let each vintage settle into place. Since 2011, Willett has also been co-founder of Lieu Dit, while serving as Resident Winemaker of Wenzlau Vineyards, a set of overlapping roles that shows breadth without breaking continuity.

The Work Today

At the Lompoc winery, the 2005 founder role continues alongside Willett’s work as owner and winemaker. The phrasing is straightforward; the execution is not. Carrying a winery from its first outline through each vintage means holding both the long view and the day-to-day corrections in the same hand. The work is repetition with consequence: tasting, judging, waiting, and revisiting the same questions each harvest with one more year of reference.

In Their Words Willett describes wine in practical terms: “For me, wine is a wonderful craft; it’s really cool to constantly explore it, and try to understand something that doesn’t have a lot of absolutes.” The point is not mystery for its own sake, but a field that stays open to study through taste and observation. That same logic shows up in the vineyard: “Firstly, we pick the grapes earlier so that they have higher acidity and less sugar—therefore, less alcohol.” It is a method statement, but also a clear preference for freshness, balance, and fruit expression before ripeness turns to excess.

Acclaim

He treats wine as a craft shaped by attention and disciplined choices, not as a field of fixed answers. His picking decisions follow that same line: earlier harvests for higher acidity and less sugar, and therefore less alcohol. That approach gives the career its continuity. The through line is restraint, timing, and care applied again and again to what the fruit offers.