The Italian Soul of Part Wines

Marco Lucchesi vividly remembers the time when he was 10 several years previous and tasted a lineup of new wines from Piedmont with his grandfather and father at their family’s restaurant in Pisa, Italy, where his dad was just one of the early skilled sommeliers in the enterprise.

“I was trapped to the glass,” remembers Lucchesi, who now makes Segment Wines, as well as a higher-end eponymous manufacturer from Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Maria Valley grapes in a Buellton warehouse. “I could flavor the fruit and then a creating flavor profile that I could not even identify.”

While he was meant to take around his parents’ restaurant — named Marcellino Pane e Vino, which they owned until 4 years back — when he grew up, Lucchesi came to the United States for a check out in 1998. “I promised my mom that I’d arrive back again in a few of months,” said Lucchesi. To her dismay, he’s under no circumstances remaining.

He wound up in the Bay Spot at to start with, finding out wine at Napa Valley College or university whilst operating restaurant jobs, and then uncovered his way to Santa Barbara, getting married (due to the fact divorced) and obtaining a daughter (now 16 many years old) along the way. In this article, he labored in dining establishments as well, principally Italian eateries in Montecito like Via Vai and Pane e Vino in the Higher Village and Trattoria Mollie and Tre Lune on Coastline Village Road.

But the most important target was to make his possess wine, which he commenced performing in earnest in 2014, launching Portion Wines with a couple companions. (A single died very last calendar year, and he parted approaches with the other individuals about the similar time.) “I’ve acquired to do something I have to have to do to help this,” he mentioned.

Things acquired really serious in March 2016, when Lucchesi opened his vineyard for tastings, and begun growing generation, hitting about 1,600 cases by 2019. His lineup is a compelling mix of what Santa Barbara County does well: pinot noir from the cooler sections of the Santa Maria Valley, Bordelaise versions from the hotter Los Olivos District and Content Canyon appellations, a bit of Rhône from Ballard Canyon tossed in. But he’s also creating wine from Italian grapes these as sangiovese, nebbiolo, vermentino, and, certainly, even that arneis, continue to a very unusual assortment in California.

Today, Lucchesi is tightening his concentration on a number of pick properties, like pinot noir from Rancho Ontiveros — he thinks he has the first grapes that vintner James Ontiveros has bought to any one else from that coveted residence — and Bordeaux reds from Star Lane and Stag Canyon vineyards. He’s steadily getting rid of oak affect from the system, and the wines, specifically the newer kinds, exhibit that freshness and savory, herbal tones that are hallmarks of the area.

“I’m just locking down on my qualities,” explained Lucchesi. “Now I have a continuum.”

He’s particularly very pleased of the sangiovese he is pulling from the Terry Evans Vineyard, found involving the Gainey property and the Santa Ynez River. “Now we are getting the total winery, and there is no one particular else,” he described of that planting. 

Although he exudes Italian exuberance — he’s borderline manic in his excitement more than the overall procedure — and an affinity to common tactics, Lucchesi is meticulously very careful in his winemaking. “I do not want to be the monotonous man, but men and women have to have to know that there is a large amount of science and chemistry concerned,” he explained though exhibiting off his small lab. “Sensory analysis tells you a ton, but you would be a idiot not to verify your chemistry when you will need it.”

But his heart stays extremely much in his indigenous land, where by hundreds of a long time of wine society imbue a tangible spirit into Lucchesi’s fashion and solutions. “I want to deliver the Previous Earth to Santa Ynez,” he pledged. “This is my society, and this is my soul that I have been dwelling and respiratory given that I was a young kid.” See sectionwines.com.

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