Winemaker Matt McKinney

So many seem to arrive at the world of wine by unexpected paths, its allure calling them out of usually more sensible life directions to the pursuit of the right place and the perfect wine. Matt McKinney’s path to making wine began on the back of a truck on a closed-down freeway in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was January of 2010, and his professional volleyball team had just won the Puerto Rican Superior League Championship. The police had shut down the highway, and McKinney and his teammates sat victoriously in the beds of Ford F150s while seemingly the entire volleyball-crazed city paraded behind them, horns honking.

Hours before, McKinney’s team had been down 2-0 in the best-out-of-three championship match, the team struggling and their chances slipping away. Yet there were more than volleyball hopes at stake for McKinney. His family owned a ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley of California, and before the season began, his 3rd as a professional, he made a deal with his dad Harry and mom Lee Ann, who had moved their family from Woodland Hills to Santa Ynez in 1992.

“We had 10 acres and we weren’t doing anything with it,” McKinney explains. “I had been asking my dad for years if we could plant a vineyard on our property, but he had always shrugged it off. I made a deal with him that third year, that if we won the championship, I could plant the vineyard.”

Miraculously, perhaps with the aid of the wine gods, the team rallied to win the final 3 sets and the match. The frenzied celebration, and McKinney Family Vineyards, was begun. That spring, back in bucolic and much quieter Santa Ynez, the family planted a quarter acre of Syrah and a quarter acre of Viognier.

Once considered the #1 high school volleyball prospect in the country, with the acclaim of Olympic legend Todd Rogers, McKinney went from Santa Ynez High School to UCLA with a basketball scholarship and plans to walk on the volleyball team, because of NCAA regulations that a student must accept the scholarship of the big-money sport. Yet a rash of injuries, digestive issues, and coaching changes marred his college athletic career. After spending the summer before his sophomore year practicing with NBA stars Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce and former UCLA players, he broke his foot on the first day of practice. His junior year he led the volleyball team into the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament, only to tear the labrum in his shoulder. The injuries, combined with severe stomach ailments, led him to medically retire, which meant that he could keep his scholarship and graduate but that his college career was finished.

Sitting in his living room, in the guest house on the back of his family property, which also doubles as command center for McKinney Family Vineyards, McKinney still feels the disappointment of his UCLA career. “I had grown up in Woodland Hills going to UCLA basketball games, and getting a scholarship was a dream come true,” he says. “My life looks so dreamy now to people from the outside, but there has been so much hardship underneath it all.” After college, he resolved to try volleyball one more time, practicing with the U.S. National Team in Anaheim, which led to his chance in Puerto Rico the following year, and of course, a vineyard. After Puerto Rico he trained with a partner to play in the AVP, the professional beach volleyball league. When his partner went down with a hamstring injury and the AVP declared bankruptcy, McKinney thought it was time to think post-volleyball plans. He moved home and started a new type of training: learning how to make wine.

My dad is a Taurus, my mom is a Libra, I am a Leo, the vineyard brings us all together, and the navigation stars are our family's journey to the Santa Ynez Valley

He showed up for an interview for a harvest internship at the Dierberg Starlane Vineyard in 2015 sounding very much like an elite athlete. McKinney told their winemaker, Tyler Thomas, that he was “prepared to get here early and stretch every day.” That limberness was lucky: that season, harvest temperatures soared well above 100 for several days in a row in Happy Canyon, the hottest region of Santa Ynez and the home of the best Cabernet.

The following year, he interned for boutique star Dragonette Cellars, where he recalls a serious conversation with one of their winemakers, Brandon Sparks-Gillis. “I told Brandon that I wanted to work harvest with them,” he says. “Brandon looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘Do you have any idea what you are getting yourself into? Do you have any clue how brutally hard this industry is?’”

McKinney calls that kind of honesty a gut check. “Just because you are passionate about something doesn’t mean that it will happen,” he admits. “I have had to prove to my family and myself, over and over again, that this is what I want to do and that I am willing to put in the work to make it happen.”

In addition to the two harvest internships, McKinney took viticulture and winemaking classes at nearby Allen Hancock College and also sat in on sommelier classes to refine his palate. As for his winemaking style, he considers himself a hybrid of Dierberg Starlane and Dragonette. “Dierberg has more of an old world style: mineral-driven, higher acid, leaner profile,” he explains. “And they rely more on the numbers and science of winemaking. Dragonette is more about feel, about connection with the grapes, the vineyards, and the wines. They are the best kind of new world winemakers, with the big, ripe California fruit and lots of viscosity, but there is complexity and acidity as well.”

Indeed, McKinney’s Chardonnay, which he calls “Queen Charlemagne,” artfully combines those two styles. Chablis lovers will notice a chalky minerality and zesty acidity, yet undergirded by a soft texture and richness on the palate.

A history major at UCLA, McKinney is clever with the names of his signature wines. In addition to the Queen Charlemagne Chardonnay (pointing back to the Burgundian legend that King Charlemagne’s wife grew tired of red wine staining his grey beard and replanted the red grapes of their estate with white grapes), McKinney also makes a wine called Napolean’s Secret, which is a Bordeaux-style red with a surprise blending partner.

“It was a secret that in years when the Bordeaux grapes were unripe, winemakers would blend in some Syrah from the Rhone River Valley, and that is why I blend some of my estate Syrah into Napolean’s Secret,” he explains. “The chateau classifications of Bordeaux were done in the time of Napolean, and their secret was the Syrah.”

McKinney’s bestselling wine is Tuscan Nights, his version of a Super Tuscan blend, the bright tones of Sangiovese intermingling with the base notes of Cabernet and lifted by a splash of his estate Viognier. He has also made a Rosé of Pinot Noir from the Presqu’ile Vineyard in Santa Maria, a Pinot Noir from the legendary La Encantada Vineyard in the Sta. Rita Hills, a Syrah from the Duvarita Vineyard near Lompoc, and a Sauvignon Blanc from the Happy Canyon Vineyard.

In the spring of 2017, McKinney planted an acre of Grenache on his property, as well as more Syrah and a little Sangiovese as well. Aside from some occasional help from his cousins and vineyard worker friends, this is a one-man operation, an agreement he and his parents made. He is in charge of the vineyard, winemaking, bottling, labeling, shipping, wine club, finances, and marketing. He has also started hosting private tours on his property, inviting people into his home to spend a slow afternoon tasting his wines and walking the vineyard. Guests may have to step around a wine club box or two, but for such an intimate look of a vineyard and the story behind it, no one seems to mind.

When pressed as to what drives him, McKinney says that while the winemaking process is important and satisfying to him, he perseveres because of a simple and abiding love for wine: “I love wine because of what it does to people. It is a way of appreciating the end of your day. It’s easy in life to not take the time to say, ‘Good job. You made it through the day. Here is what you accomplished.’ Someone handing you a glass of wine does that for you. It helps you slow down. I can do that for other people, by sharing the product I am making with family and friends. That brings them joy and it brings me joy. I can’t ask for anything else in life than to be a positive influence on my friends and family.”