Melville Winery ToDoTC.com To Do in the Twin Cities Wines

	Melville Winery Date: July 3, 2026 5185 CA-246 Lompoc, CA 93436 Phone: (805) 735-7030 www.melvillewinery.com

Melville Winery

We have a go to guy for wine. His name is Patrick, and he works most Friday nights in the North Loop of Minneapolis in North Loop Wine & Spirits. We see and talk to Patrick most Friday nights when we are at our 6:30 weekly wine tasting. If you need a bottle of great wine Patrick is your guy.

The theme on month at the Wayzata Wine Club was bring an old Cherished wine you have had for years, and we will open it together between us friends. Well, if E & I have a bottle that is over a year old it is because we bought it that way. So, in this case we went to Patrick and said we need a good older bottle of wine to impress friends for a party. Patrick simply asked how old and what’s the price point. We said ten years and $75. Patrick said I have just the thing for you. He walked to the far side of the store stared a bit and grabbed us a bottle, he said $67, and your friends will be impressed. And Patrick’s wine WAS the wine of the night.

So when we told Patrick we were going to Santa Barbara and asked what wineries we need to go to Patrick said you need to go to Melville Winery. Thus, we would be going to Melville Winery.

We went to Melville Winery on tasting Day 2. We grouped our wineries by area, and this was in the Lompac area. We went to their website and got reservations. We did advise them we were going to write this article, so we didn’t get the guide they hired last week.

We have come to the conclusion you can tell a great winery a mile before you get to it. Look for the little things: flowers at the end of the rows, fences straight in perfect upkeep and a dozen other things we talked about in walk abouts. It’s things that seem incidental but matter as you add them up. It’s that thing that makes their wine 1% better times the ten things. Each one affect things a bit.

I’m at this point takes back a day to a small bike repair shed by Stolpman Tasting Room we were unimpressed with. There was a bike repair guy going over a bike wheel he had just repaired cleaning the area between spokes. I told him: “I bet you are really good at bike repair.”  He said I am how did you know? I said you worry about things most would ignore it’s the little things in life that are important. He said you are right.

So, E& I pulled into Melville Winery and the place was immaculate. Bushes were trimmed, everything was clean, nice places to taste, and everyone was nice. As we walked into the tasting room we were met by Cosmos our guide of the day. Cosmos said are you Dennis & Ellen? I said yes, we are. Cosmos said welcome to California and to our Winery we have been expecting you, I hope we have a good experience.

Cosmos knew his stuff. Not two downplay what Cosmos did but he looked at the three couples he had for his 11AM tasting, realized we mentioned we were going to write and article, saw my writing clip board and put it all together. It’s how great companies and people think.  Cosmos then escorted us out to the patio and poured us each a glass as we waited for the rest of our tour to arrive.

Cosmos then said do you have any questions as we wait for the rest of the tour to arrive? I said give me your one-minute elevator speech about your winery. He said OK: We started planting in 1996. We are in the San Artita AVA we have this property and another just down the road total of 120 acres in Vines at 500 feet above sea level, we have 16 acres of Chardonnay, 22 acres of Syrah, and grow 17 clones of Pinot Noir. Two dozen people work for us full time.

Great elevator speech. We learned as the tour progressed, they got cold ocean winds from the west at night that blew moist cold air through that exited go the south by morning. Something the cold Pinot Noir clones all loved.

Cosmos spoke of a handful of varieties and the unique harvesting and growing techniques of each. Each row has a sign at the end describing each unique set of grapes growing in that row. They started harvesting in September and sometimes would go all the way to February. They bottle in March.

They do not have bottle facilities on site. They bring in a bottling truck that can bottle 5500 bottles a day. They foot stomp in 80-90 vessels. I asked about the foot stomp, does that mean you leave on the stems, I had heard that made wine bitter. He said not if the stems are ripe. That I had never heard waiting for not only the fruit but also the stems to get ripe.

Melville is considered a Cold Climate Winery because the high temperatures hit about 78 degrees by July 4th. When we were there, they were deleafing the Syrah’s. Syrah likes their berries exposed to direct sunlight. So, the staff and crew hand pull the heaves that block the sun from the fruit.

They harvest their Pinot Noirs between 11 PM and sunrise because the air is cool, and the Pinot Noir skins can take the handling better.  When they pick, they pick nine tons of fruit a day. Their total Harvest is 200 tons.

The day we were there they were supposed to have three earthquakes, and we never noticed. We tasted four of their wines and they were all very good. We are glad Patrick recommended the place.

Contact us Dennis@ToDoTC.com