SAMsARA Wine Co.

Trusting the fruit before the cellar

Harvest timing comes first for Matt Brady, winemaker at SAMsARA Wine Co. in Goleta, before any cellar decision has earned its place. His work sits close to Santa Barbara wine country, where the practical education is in grape handling, picking windows, and the restraint to let a site remain legible after fermentation. Brady studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara, then built his career in the cellar, including head winemaker at Jaffurs Winery from 2012 to 2015 and winemaker at Jaffurs Wine Cellars until 2016. He has been winemaker at SAMsARA Wine Co. since 2017.

The lineage he names is direct. Craig, his predecessor in the cellar work that shaped him, taught him how to solve wine challenges and how to trust his own judgment. Brady has said, “I really learned everything I know from Craig.” That is not a decorative quote here. It explains the method: the decision made at the press, the adjustment refused, the day when the right move is to wait. At SAMsARA, that training meets a boutique winery focused on small-lot, cool-climate wines from Sta. Rita Hills, with Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Syrah, and Grenache carrying the house’s attention to site.

Small lots from Sta. Rita Hills

The program at SAMsARA centers on still red and still white wines, drawn around the cool-climate character of Santa Rita Hills and made with minimal intervention. The house states a commitment to 100% sustainable farming, and the work follows that frame rather than a cellar style imposed after the fact. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay give Brady the clearest line to texture and balance; Syrah and Grenache broaden the register without changing the discipline.

His named wines make the approach easier to read than any manifesto could: Santa Rita Hills Chardonnay 2021, Zotovich Vineyards Chardonnay 2021, Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir 2021, and La Vina Vineyard Pinot Noir 2021. Each title keeps the vineyard or appellation in front. That matters in a cellar where the stated focus is site-driven wine.

A quiet room for site-driven wine

The Goleta tasting room works at an intimate scale, close to the winery’s coastal setting and its quiet tempo. The mood is cozy rather than polished flat; rustic and elegant can sit together here because the room does not need to turn the wine into theater. It gives the glass room to speak. The tasting format includes in-person and virtual options, but the stronger image is physical: a counter, a pour, a label that names Santa Rita Hills or La Vina Vineyard, and Brady’s cellar decisions arriving without explanation in the texture of the wine.

Solar-powered operations add another layer to the place without becoming the story. The craft remains at the bench-side of winemaking: fruit brought in with a point of view, handled in small lots, and shaped toward balance rather than display. La Vina Vineyard Pinot Noir 2021 is the glass that makes the place specific.