Samuel Louis Smith

We’ll cut to the chase. The 2022 vintage from Samuel Louis Smith is possibly his most complete and thrilling line-up to date. Sam refers to himself as a “neo-classicist” winemaker, meaning that he’s working to revive a style of classic California wines that has disappeared over the years. His wines, from peripheral and stunningly gorgeous vineyard sites located at high altitudes, are noteworthy for their balance, purity, complexity, and relatively low alcohol. Sam has a particular skill in coaxing minerality, spice notes, and supple fruit from his vineyards. His work in the cellar, through his use of whole cluster fermentation, vineyard specific pied de cuves and a judicious use of oak, is meant to offer the purest expression of cool California wines possible.

With a tiny 1000 case production, split among six to eight cuvées, it’s no surprise Sam’s eponymous micro-négociant project has flown under the radar. Working out of a shared garage space in Salinas and tending to a handful of singular, organically farmed plots up and down the 101 and Pacific Coast Highway, Sam isn’t afforded a ton of time to work the market, and until recently, he even worked full-time as the head winemaker for Morgan Winery, the organic producer in Santa Lucia Highlands. As exhausting as his schedule is, he somehow pulls it off, and we’re just here to tell you: drink these wines.

Sam’s nervy yet texture-driven Chardonnays, lifted, whole-cluster Syrah and Pinots, and juicy, Fleurie/Morgon-inspired Gamay have us believing in the new generation of California wine. Indeed, the whole SLS project flies in the face of the over-production of commodity wine grapes, the utter glut of custom-crush brands manifesting themselves out of thin air. There is endurance and realness in the “micro” and the unscalable at the heart of the SLS project.

Though a native Californian, Sam’s journey down the wine trail began in 2009 when he took his first trip to France as a university student, landing in Bordeaux and discovering the world of wine while studying French. Eventually pivoting career paths from poli sci to wine making, he went to work under Santa Barbara legend Doug Margerum of Margerum Wine Company, and by 2014, produced his first vintage under the eponymous Samuel Louis Smith label.

2015 was the next pivotal year for Sam, journeying back to France – this time to the Northern Rhône – to stage with François Villard. Like Sam, Villard was not born into a wine family, and he found his way by making small runs of Condrieu in the early 90s until becoming a true benchmark producer for the region in the coming decades.It was during that summer and fall of 2015 — the first of a string of warm, ripe vintages not dissimilar to those in Northern California — where Sam learned how to make fresh wines despite high temps. At Villard, it was crucial to focus on extraction temperature and ratios of whole cluster to destemmed fruit. His time in France was also spent studying the greats, from Morey-Saint-Denis to Hermitage, and finding a particular love of the wines of Dujac, Arnaud Ente, Julien Sunier, Gonon, and Jamet. This certainly influenced his own winemaking style upon returning to California.

In 2016, Sam began to work under Santa Lucia Highland’s pioneer of organic viticulture, Dan Lee of Morgan Winery. While also working at Morgan full-time, Sam put his experience in the Rhône to work, making his first Sandstone Terraces Syrah in 2016, along with one single vineyard pinot under the SLS label. The Sandstone Syrah has remained a staple in Sam’s lineup nearly every vintage since. And every vineyard Sam works with, save for the Gamay from Escolle, is farmed organically or in organic conversion.

All of Sam’s wines begin life with pied de cuve, or a wild-yeast culture cultivated in a small batch of must. Small batches of grapes are crushed and left to ferment in each individual vineyard, building up robust yeast cultures to kick-start fermentation of the remaining juice. Because he works in a shared facility, this technique prevents cross-contamination of yeasts from different vineyards and enhances the sense of site-specificity.

For reds, Sam works judiciously with whole cluster fruit and ripe stems. Sam believes the only way to determine if the stems are ripe and useful for winemaking is to chew them, right off the vine. The spice of the ripe stems is what finds its way into the finished wines. This year's Pelio Pinot Noir is 90% whole cluster, with the stunning balance of both lift and tannin. The Syrah similarly utilizes high proportions of whole bunches. He forgoes fining and filtering to preserve this texture in reds (whites are unfined but go through light filtration).

Zooming out of the cellar and looking at the big picture of California wine in 2024, we find youthful producers like Sam re-energizing us as wine lovers. By uncovering a handful of fringe sites, shrouded by the marine layer, he shows us what new expressions of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Syrah, and Gamay are possible with a deft hand and a light touch. Coastal and mountainous wines with energy, poise, and structure without the excessive warmth and high alcohol – this is the new face of the West Coast.

2022 Vintage — This year found Sam confronting one of the more challenging vintages to date: early bud break in March, a succession of heat wave, frost, rain during the growing season, lower cluster counts and widespread shatter due to multi-year drought. Average to above average temperatures, along with less marine layer through the summer, confirmed that this year would be an early harvest. A week-long heatwave starting Labor Day Weekend would hasten ripening and further diminished crop loads. Thankfully, weather for the remainder of harvest was back to normal, though the heatwave and tiny yields forced most parcels to ripen simultaneously — not easy when each bunch is hand-harvested. At first glance, 2022 seems to be a combination of 2014 and 2017 and the end result for the vintage was clean, fruit-driven, and fairly opulent wines with individuality determined by pick date (before, durning, or after the heatwave).