Casa Dumetz Wines

Fruit decisions under one roof

Grenache sets the frame for Sonja Magdevski, winemaker at Casa Dumetz Wines in Los Alamos, where she keeps the source, cellar work, and release in close conversation. Her first lessons in winegrowing began in the field; since 2004, she has been learning from the ground up, including helping plant a vineyard. That beginning still matters at the bench-side of her work. It gives the bottle a line back to weather, labor, and picking decisions rather than to cellar correction alone.

Magdevski has owned and made wine at Casa Dumetz Wines since 2011. The house is small production, women-owned, and centered on Santa Barbara County fruit, with Rhône varieties carrying much of the discipline. She also owns Babi's Beer Emporium in Los Alamos and, since 2025, serves as winemaker of Clementine Carter Wines, but Casa Dumetz is the place where the owner and winemaker roles meet in the same hands. The arrangement suits a cellar language built around balance, texture, and purpose.

Rhône varieties as the house grammar

The portfolio at Casa Dumetz Wines turns around Grenache, Mourvedre, and Syrah, with Pinot Noir also part of the work. Those grapes ask for a winemaker who can read structure without overworking it: Grenache for lift and red-fruited transparency, Mourvedre for darker grain and frame, Syrah for depth and savory line. Magdevski has said, “I am mystified by the stunning Rhône varieties grown in our glorious area.” The sentence lands less as romance than as a working allegiance to place.

Santa Barbara County is the stated source of the fruit, and the wines sit in the still red register rather than in a broad hospitality program. The emphasis is site expression, a phrase that can become thin in careless hands, but here it is tied to Magdevski's long approach to winegrowing and ownership. She holds the decisions around fruit, cellar work, and final release together. In a small-production winery, that matters. There are fewer places for intent to diffuse between vineyard, cellar, and bottle.

The quiet tasting room in Los Alamos

The tasting room is historic Los Alamos in scale: intimate, rustic, and close to the street life of a small Santa Barbara County town. Inside, the room reads as sweet and comfortable rather than staged, with a quiet noise level that lets a flight move at its own pace. Outside, the seating gives the wines a softer register, especially when Grenache or Mourvedre moves from glass to conversation without the pressure of a crowded room.

This is not a cellar that asks the visitor to admire volume. Its strength is proximity. The counter, the flight, the outdoor seats, and the small-production bottles all keep attention on Magdevski's choices, especially the Rhône varieties that have become Casa Dumetz's working grammar. Santa Barbara County fruit is in the hands of Sonja Magdevski at Casa Dumetz Wines.