Pomar Junction Vineyard & Winery

Selection before the blend

Barrel selection comes first for Jim Shumate, winemaker at Pomar Junction Vineyard & Winery in Templeton, before Cab Forward becomes a reserve blend. He has held the cellar here since 2011, after a career built close to the vessels: barrel room work at Meridian Vineyards, Senior Lab Technician and Senior Barrel Technician roles there, then Cellar Master and Consulting Winemaker at Templeton Wine Services from 1999–2008. At the Cal Poly pilot winery, he worked as Cellar Master, winemaker, and lecturer from 2008–2011, a bridge between production and instruction that still shapes his place in San Luis Obispo County wine. Pomar Junction gives that discipline a narrow frame: estate vineyards, small production, and wines drawn from the Merrill family’s own farming. The work is not presented as spectacle. It is selection, blending, timing, and the willingness to let structure matter more than speed.

Estate fruit in a cooling corridor

The estate sits in the Templeton Gap, where limestone soils and cooling breezes give Shumate a cellar brief that begins outside the door. The Merrill family farms the vines under SIP-certified sustainable practices, and the winery keeps its focus on still red and still white wines from that ground. Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Pinot Noir, and Chardonnay form the visible spine of the program, with Cab Forward showing how Shumate handles a reserve blend when the best barrels point in the same direction. The winery’s own language is plain: “Cab Forward is a Reserve blend of our best barrels of Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot and Merlot. This wine honors the railroad heritage of the Merrill family. Excellent aging potential.” That is enough to read the method. Cabernet Sauvignon gives the shoulders, Petit Verdot and Merlot shape the middle, and the final decision rests at the bench, not in the label copy.

The cellar beside the vines

The place keeps a simple face: a quiet tasting room, vineyard views, and the relaxed pace of an estate that does not need to perform rusticity for anyone. The cellar work sits beside rows of sustainably farmed vines, close enough that the room and the vineyard feel like parts of the same sentence rather than separate attractions. In that setting, Shumate’s restraint has somewhere natural to land, with the view outside echoing the choices made inside. A private tasting here is less about abundance than attention, the glass returning to the same questions the barrels asked first: which lot has length, which one has grip, which one can wait. Those questions give the visit its shape and keep the focus steady. The railroad thread in the Merrill family story gives Cab Forward its name, but the wine’s center remains cellar judgment. The final mark is still the blend in Cab Forward.