Deovlet
Ryan Deovlet’s style, described by William Kelly as “Santa Barbara’s answer to Vincent Dauvissat”, is for light touch, aromatic, relatively high acid wines that offer up crystalline flavours and plenty of savoury complexity. Alcohols are generally low, new oak usage tends to be no more than 20-30%. For the Pinots, whole cluster is judiciously, never dogmatically, employed. The whites begin their fermentations at cool temperatures in steel tank, and once invigorated, are cooled before going to barrel to complete their fermentations.
With access to some of the very top sites in the Santa Rita Hills AVA, Ryan’s wines speak clearly of their origins. The reds range from floral, mineral, red fruited delicacy in the Zotovich (from sandy soils), to the more savoury, powerful, earthy complexity with La Encantada and the flowing, tender red fruited grace and depth of Sandford and Benedict. For the whites, Zotovich offers up a racy minerality, while Sandford & Benedict offers more dimension and richness. Both finish with a fine crisp salty nuttiness that speaks more of the old world than anything overtly ‘Californian’.
The Santa Barbara offerings tend to hail from lighter soils and are approachable earlier, but maintain the same sense of poise and tension as the other wines – they are both tremendously drinkable and manage to hold your interest right to the end of the bottle.