Sandhi is a small production California winery focusing on select vineyards from the Sta. Rita Hills in Santa Barbara County. Sandhi was founded in 2010 by Rajat Parr, the wine director for Michael Mina Restaurants, and winemaker, Sashi Moorman.
Sandhi represents a union essential to the production of wine: the collaboration between man, earth, and vine. The willing participation of all three elements is necessary to make great wine, and the winegrower must make this collaboration rich and nourishing for all involved. An understanding of these joint efforts informs Sandhi’s exploration of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vines throughout the Santa Barbara County terroir.
The individual vineyards from which these grapes originate–some legendary, some new–have been exhaustively vetted for character, personality, and balance. Employing the wisdom and talents of people who know the vineyards, Sandhi is dedicated to making wines of finesse, minerality, acidity, structure and balance. Wine achieves power and beauty through the seamless integration of these qualities, and this is the inspiration for Sandhi. Wines exhibiting extreme ripeness, alcohol, oak, and other discordant exaggerations cannot truly express a specific vineyards terroir.
Sandhi is dedicated to making wines of finesse, minerality, acidity, structure and balance. Wine achieves power and beauty through the seamless integration of these qualities, and this is the inspiration for us. We feel wines exhibiting extreme ripeness, alcohol, oak and other discordant exaggerations cannot truly express a specific vineyards’ terroir.
It is because of this focus for balance for why we are so determined to find vineyard sites from the Santa Rita Hills that are old-vine, have cold temperatures, windy exposures, north-facing expositions and clay and diatomaceous soils.
From a cellar approach, we go to great lengths to protect the vibrancy, freshness and energy that the Santa Rita Hills fruit delivers. For whites and red we prefer neutral barrel and concrete vessel employing a conservative amount of new French oak. We do not add water, sugar, acid, enzymes and other fixing agents.
All wines are wild-yeast fermented. All Chardonnays go through malo-lactic with the lees not stirred. Almost all Pinot Noirs are whole-cluster fermented because we feel the wines smell more alive and have more complex textures than other wines.