Introducing Sparks*

James Sparks excitement. James Sparks great wine talk. And now James Sparks scrumptious sparkling wine.

But I guess for some of you I need to back-up. Let me introduce you to Kings Carey, another tiny winery that could and can in Santa Barbara County. It's pretty much all James Sparks, with tasting and marketing assistance from his wife Anna Ferguson-Sparks, and that's how you get the winery's unusual name: the couples' hometowns were (respectively) Carey, Idaho and Kings Point, New York. Sparks is better known as the winemaker for SB stalwart Liquid Farm, crafting some of our county's best Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, plus an annual killer rosé of Mourvèdre. (More on rosé in a bit.)

As with many winemakers working for someone else, Sparks also wanted to follow his own muse too. Hence, Kings Carey, producing a tiny 600-1200 cases a harvest, almost always single vineyard, single varietal. It can get tricky, as Sparks has no vineyards of his own, and he's also meticulous about what grapes he chooses to work with. He insists on organic fruit--as he puts it, "organic is proactive, not reactive"--and that means from year to year what he gets to make might change. But whatever he makes, you will want to drink, promise.

Even better, you can taste at his small winemaking facility that just celebrated its first year in a spot just past the Welcome to Solvang sign (after you leave the town going west) on the 246. Yes, he's the tasting room person, too (most of the time), so you need to book ahead, but it's worth checking out the spot that was a motel in the 1970s (one room in the space was clearly a large shower at some point, and perhaps a chilling room in Kings Carey's future) and most recently where Broken Clock Vinegar Works did something very different with grapes. 

What Sparks does is minimal, and that's why his wines tend to sing of site and varietal. It's fun to be able to side-by-side his two Chardonnays, a 2021 MarFarm from SLO with bright lemon curd loveliness and creaminess, alongside a 2021 from Spear (he's got a soft spot for this vineyard and who could blame him?) in the Sta. Rita Hills, a bit richer than the wine from a bit further north (more heat?) even if made with no new oak. Another difference between the two Chardonnays--the Edna Valley had some residual sugar, so Sparks filtered that out. So he will intervene when he has to. But that's always up to what each wine and vintage suggests he needs to do to let it shine.

Sparks particularly has an affinity for Grenache. His talent is to let the grape sing tenor without merely burying its brightness in dark berry baritone. Take the 2021 To Market Grenache he's pouring right now. At 12.5% ABV it's up to you how and when you hope to love it--give it a quick chill, and it's your warm weather red if you don't want to rosé; serve it cellar temp, and it's a versatile red for apps and cheese or weightier fish or lighter meats. 

And I promised to discuss rosé, didn't I. The Liquid Farm each year is one of our county's standouts, made from Mourvèdre, walking the knife edge of lean and fleshy to the point you keep drinking it trying to decide. That kind of balance isn't easy. But Sparks replicates it with a different but equally pleasing rosé for Kings Carey, made from Grenache, 4-hours skin contact, foot stomped, aged on the lees for 6 months in neutral 400L barrels. So steely and bright it asks where the heck the sun is, and why aren't you out in it and imbibing this delight? 

While I won't walk you through the full lineup--there's equally enticing and lively Syrah and Semillon too--Sparks' most exciting current project is sparkling. To create bubbly in small production is truly a labor of love, as you're not making enough to buy machines to riddle your bottles for you, to point out just one labor-intensive process. While his blanc de noir is still in production--méthode champenoise wine is sort of like trying to make aged bourbon, as it's going to be a many year investment until you release round one--he has released a 2021 Kings Carey Sparkling Pinot Noir Rosé from Spear Vineyard. (See, great grape source is back again.) Of course, it's been a ten-year thought process, he insists, to get to making bubbly. All that thought shows in the glass, that breadiness you want without any heft, that lift from the effervescence, and then the sweet/sour fruit tumbling like a coin that will land the way you placed your bet, every time. If this is just the "simpler" first effort, it's hard to imagine how terrific that blanc de noir will be upon release. 

Then again, Kings Carey was meant as the place where Sparks could play. You'll know that as soon as you glimpse one of the bottles, all sporting busy for a wine label art from Philadelphia-based Hawk Krall. Sparks admits to his love 1960s and '70s art with a Vegas neon feel, hence the art choice that's as bold as his wines are refined. Kings Carey teaches us about a perfect balance we never even imagined existed.

* And, yes, instead of making it clear this post is about a talented winemaker, I had to make a reference to an album title from 1977. Sorry, James! At least Sparks are having a moment again, now.

Relishing Something Wild at WOPN

One of the great joys of returning year after year to an event like World of Pinot Noir is you get to reunite with old friends. Sometimes that's a winemaker you only see annually for ten minutes at a tasting in a big Bacara ballroom (hi, Anthony Beckman from Balletto--the wines are still rocking!). Sometimes that means one vineyard served several excellent ways.

Hi, Radian.

Sure, it's hard enough to decide whether you prefer pinots from Santa Maria Valley or Sta. Rita Hills, and it might depend on how your mood or the moon waxes or wanes that day. But it's pretty hard to argue the most singular, spectacular pinot noir coming out of the Sta. Rita Hills of late will have grapes from Radian.

We're lucky that while Stan Kroenke, sad Rams owner, owns the deed--which means the man most in charge of the grapes is winemaker Matt Dees (for The Hilt)--he still knows enough to sell some of the fine fruit to people who will do it more than honorably, winemakers like Bryan Babcock, Ken Brown, Aaron Walker of Pali.

And then there were some Radians to taste at WOPN, too. As is true with his house style, James Sparks of Liquid Farm makes a Radian that's lithe and ethereal--wine happily haunted by its own ghost. Of course, coming from Radian you can't escape the earthiness, an almost muskiness. All that diatomaceous earth--crazy good drainage that makes roots say, "Hey, where did that water go?" yet also, well I'm going to say it again--ghosts. It's fossilized algae, after all. You know, like "Soylent Green is other diatoms!"

So sure, you get the usual Sta. Rita Hills fruit, cherry moving to cranberry to raspberry, but you get it after a good fight on land just-not-quite too close to the Pacific. Lots of intensity, few grapes, better wine. Like the one from Montemar, a garagiste so small their website is just a Facebook page, that only delivers magnificent fruit (they work with Bentrock, too, the partner-vineyard to Radian, but also much more straightforward--in topography if nothing else). A bit bigger and fuller than the Liquid Farm, if you want that (it's hard not too).

And then there's the Radian from Dragonette. Damn. It's a glass of wine that you drink wine for, hoping and not quite finding enough. Brandon Sparks-Gillis poured me my sample, watched my face go stupid with happiness after my taste, and simply said, "It's a magical place." Trying to figure out a way to describe it I've landed on this--it's the girl in Richard Thompson's exquisite "Beeswing," the one with animal in her eyes, the one for which the song's narrator sings, "If I could just taste/All of her wildness now/If I could hold her in my arms today/Then I wouldn't want her any other way."

But let's not get caught up in that feminine/masculine wine reduction, for while Radian is a pretty wine, it's pretty like James Dean. So let's consider the wine also biker outlaw James in Richard Thompson's even more famous "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." A bit dangerous, and therefore glamorous, because, c'mon, we all love the bad boy, the femme fatale. And just as Thompson can finger-pick so much all at once, this wine's got notes up its grapey sleeve for days.

Importantly, these are both songs that tell stories, and someone needs to write the ballad of Radian. 

Sip This: Kings Carey 2016 Rosé of Grenache

This is wine done to bare-bones goodness, from its seemingly hand-drawn, homespun label (courtesy of Philadelphian Hawk Krall) to its direct, refreshing, delicious strawberries washed in light lemon loveliness in the glass. It’s made, in small lots, by James Sparks, whom you should know from Liquid Farm, which produces one of the county’s best chardonnay.

Want to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.