There are 350 wineries in Santa Barbara County, and it’s considered one of the most diverse wine-growing regions in the world. It’s also diverse in another way: The county features one of the highest percentages of female winemakers in the world, at around 10% per capita.
But it wasn’t always this way.
Meet Lane Tanner, one of the pioneers who paved the way for other women winemakers in the region.
Tanner was the first independent female winemaker in Santa Barbara County, starting her career at Firestone Vineyards in 1981 and starting her own label, Lane Tanner, in 1989. The label was the first in the Central Coast region to dedicate itself to Pinot Noir.
"I like Pinot, and I swear to goodness, this is my own personal view, but every alcohol, and this is true with every type of wine, has its own high," said Tanner. "I mean, a Sauvignon Blanc high is different from a Pinot high, different from a Cabernet high. But here's the other thing, a beer high and a wine high are totally different. I've always thought about the fact that you take a whole stadium of people that are watching a football game, and instead of having beer, make them drink wine, and see what that would look like."
"I didn't set out to be a winemaker, I just fell into it, and I was probably in the business for maybe three years before I started really loving it. I think a lot of it is because of Pinot Noir. I mean, I kind of found my niche," said Tanner.
Her wines helped build the county’s reputation for Pinot Noir, and the region was propelled into the limelight by the movie Sideways. Tanner co-created the wine brand for the Hitching Post, the restaurant featured in the movie.
"I started the Hitching Post label," she explained. "You know, Frank had the Hitching Post [restaurant]. He wanted a wine that was made specifically for the steaks. You know they grill them on oak wood. So what I did was I took Pinot and I made it with almost no new oak, actually no new oak literally because you're getting the oak flavors from the steaks. So this was made specifically for the Hitching Post with the recipes of how they cook their meats in mine."
However, she maintained that the attention from the movie wasn’t all good news for her.
"It sucked! That was kind of the end of my career because at that point I was doing Lane Tanner," she told KCLU. "I didn't have a tasting room. I was making a very small amount a year. I did nothing but Pinot Noirs, and because of that movie, the price of Pinot Noir grapes went through the sky! Everybody in Napa decided they should make Pinot Noirs, and none of them knew what they were doing. All of a sudden, I can't buy Pinot Noir grapes locally because everybody else is buying for whatever they can get them for and I'm priced out of the market."
"Then I go work the market two years after this happens and all these people from Napa that thought they were Pinot makers realize they weren't, so they're dumping all their Pinots on the market and so I'm trying to sell my wine and they're going, 'oh, well does that mean if I buy two cases I get the third one free?' And I'm thinking, 'what are you talking about?' They said, 'Well, that's what that guy that just left offered me," she said.
"Yeah, there's two sides, and for a lot of people, it definitely was a wonderful thing. And if you had a tasting room and you were in the Sideways movie, then the sky's the limit. But for some of us, not so much."
What she started has led to female winemakers in the region going from being the exception…to exceptional.
