The Story Behind Our Cuvée d’Inspiration

At SAMsARA, Cuvée d’Inspiration is more than just a label—it’s a declaration of intent. In French, “cuvée” refers to a special blend or lot of wine, and “d’inspiration” means just that—inspiration. This series represents our team’s creative expression, drawing on everything we love about the Sta. Rita Hills and greater Santa Barbara County. These wines are our tribute to the land, the climate, and the spirit that inspires us vintage after vintage.

The idea started with a simple goal: to create wines that don’t just reflect a single vineyard, but instead tell a broader story. Rather than focusing on one place, we wanted to showcase the beauty of blending—the harmony that can emerge when fruit from multiple exceptional sites is brought together with intention and artistry.

Our Cuvée d’Inspiration wines sit in a special place in the SAMsARA lineup. They live between our Sta. Rita Hills appellation wines and our single-vineyard designates. With these cuvées, we’re not bound by the character of just one vineyard—we have the freedom to select the most expressive, balanced, and textural barrels from across our cellar. Each blend is carefully constructed to capture the essence of a vintage, the strength of the region, and the emotional resonance of what first drew us to winemaking in Santa Barbara.

We produce them in very limited quantities, and we craft them to be both elegant and approachable—wines that can be opened with friends and family and still deliver the nuance and detail of our most serious bottlings.

When building our Cuvée d’Inspiration wines, we start with our favorite barrels from some of the finest vineyards in Sta. Rita Hills and Santa Barbara County. We taste through these lots blind, looking for those with exceptional energy, tension, and complexity, then we piece them together like a puzzle, letting structure, texture, and aromatic lift guide the final blend.

We use native yeast fermentations, modest amounts of whole cluster inclusion (particularly in the Pinot Noir and GSM), and minimal new oak, because we want the vineyard and vintage to shine. In the case of our Chardonnay, we often use extended sur lie aging in neutral barrels to build mouthfeel and mineral depth, without masking freshness. Every decision we make is about balance, elegance, and capturing the soul of this place we love.

This wine is our love letter to Sta. Rita Hills Chardonnay. Each year, we blend fruit from a selection of organically farmed, marine-influenced vineyards—including sites like Bentrock, Francesca, Spear, and Gnesa. The result is a wine that balances crisp citrus and stone fruit flavors with electric acidity and saline minerality. We often say it reminds us of crushed oyster shells and fresh tropical fruit all at once. It’s vibrant, textured, and full of energy.

Our Pinot Noir Cuvée is where we get to explore the range and depth that Sta. Rita Hills has to offer. We choose barrels from sites like La Encantada, Radian, Bentrock, and Rancho La Viña—each contributing something unique, whether it’s bright red fruit, spice, earthiness, or structure. The blend is typically fermented with a healthy portion of whole clusters and aged in mostly neutral French oak. The final wine is savory, lifted, and complex, with cranberry, cherry, herbs, and hints of underbrush and spice. It’s a Pinot that bridges the classic and the contemporary, and it evolves beautifully with time.

Our Rhône-style blend—Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre—is one of the most expressive wines we make. While the fruit sources can vary, we typically pull from both cool-climate and warmer sites within Santa Barbara County to strike a balance between vibrancy and depth. Syrah brings spice and structure, Grenache adds juicy red fruit and warmth, and Mourvèdre contributes earthy undertones and savory complexity. The wine is elegant yet layered, with notes of fresh berries, herbs, black pepper, and dried flowers. It’s the kind of bottle we find ourselves reaching for at the dinner table, again and again.

Inspiration is the through-line of everything we do. These wines are about creativity, intuition, and the joy of working with a landscape as dynamic as Santa Barbara County. Each Cuvée d’Inspiration is a conversation between the vineyards, the vintage, and our winemaking team—a snapshot of what moved us that year.

They’re not made to sit in a cellar for decades (though they age beautifully). They’re made to share, to spark conversation, and to remind us all why we fell in love with this craft in the first place.