Central Coast Group Project Santa Barbara Syrah Purple Pyramid 2014

Scott Sampler was destined for a life of eccentric creativity. His childhood in the 70’s and 80’s was spent between the creative bastion of Los Feliz in LA and tony-ass Beverly Hills. This was the height of LA’s creative boom. Born to parents of mixed heritage with an artist father, he was exposed from an early age to LA's burgeoning and vibrant food scene. His college years in Berkeley during the rise of Chez Panisse and the farm to table movement solidified the importance and centrality of food in his life. His exposure and reverence for great European wine grew from those many dinners at Chez as well as countless bottles purchased at Kermit Lynch.

After college he channeled his creativity into the film industry but wine and food remained front and center. He eventually gave up the film career and dove into winemaking. There were a couple of false starts and around 2011 Scott found himself living in a Winnebago at Rancho La Viña on Santa Rosa Road near Lompoc, making wines alongside Joe Davis of Arcadian, Brett Escalera of Consilience, and Bruno D’Alfonso and Kris Curran of D’Alfonso-Curran Wines. That was the best enology school Scott could have asked for and the skill and knowledge he gained from those talented and respected winemakers gave Scott the confidence to finally start his winery, the Central Coast Group Project (CCGP).

Scott produces his boundary breaking wine at Buellton Bodegas, the warehouses-turned-wineries complex in the heart of the central coast wine region. His years eating in Berkeley and his mother’s family’s red sauce taught him that quality ingredients cooked low and slow are the way to complex and nuanced flavors. He takes a sort of punk rock, anti-establishment ethos honed by watching X and Black Flag as a teenager on the Sunset Strip with classic winemaking techniques from the all corners of the winemaking world such as Georgia and Barolo. While it is common for most red wines to be macerated for up to a month, it is rare to see anyone macerating for as long as Scott. The reds and whites all get extended skin maceration, sometimes up to 15 months. The wines are in turn insanely complex and intensely textural. They are somehow both masterful and elegant while remaining savage and wild. They are most importantly, deeply delicious and like nothing I have ever tasted before. They are brilliant wines that can spend decades in the cellar but are show stoppers upon release.

Seemingly restless, Scott has taken his experimentation further or at least in a different direction with Scotty-Boy! fine wines & super coolers. The Scotty Boy wines are his vin de soif to his CCGP vin de garde. But like those pricier bottles, he sources exceptional fruit from some of the central coast’s best sites. They source only from small family owned vineyards, farmed at the very least without chemical spraying, if not organically and/or biodynamically; and are only harvested by hand. The focus at Scotty Boy is total transparency. Nothing was added or taken away. These zero-zero wines are bright, fresh and alive. While the CCGP are bigger, bolder wines that you can cellar for the epic meal it deserves, Scotty Boys are for drinking young and fresh with a good chill.