Concrete, glass and steel come together to create a modern masterpiece in Santa Barbara County wine … [+] country.
Village Properties
Do you love modern contemporary style but crave country ranch life? You’ll find both at a $4.25-million property on 20 acres in California’s Santa Ynez Valley. The sprawling concrete, glass and steel structure was built to capitalize on sweeping views of the surrounding rolling hills and native oak trees.
The house at 1270 Poppy Valley Road in Buellton stands out for its design by architect Jan Hochhauser of Santa Barbara-based Hochhauser Blatter Associates. Homes in the area tend to follow Spanish or Mediterranean styles. “We don’t get this kind of architecture,” said listing agent David McIntire of Village Properties. “It’s pretty uncommon.”
The modern design is something of an outlier in Santa Barbara County, which is known for its … [+] Spanish- and Mediterranean-style properties.
Village Properties
The home is located inside Jonata Springs Ranch, a gated community in Santa Barbara County that consists of 44 large parcels on more than 800 acres. Built in 2006, the modified box design captures natural light throughout the three bedrooms and three bathrooms in 3,800 square feet.
The home is located inside the gates of Jonata Springs Ranch in Buellton.
Village Properties
The house is close to 101 Freeway (15 miles from the ocean and 45 minutes from Santa Barbara) yet set back far enough to be ultra private. “It’s really a sweet spot,” McIntire said.
The Jonata Springs Ranch community consists of 44 large parcels on more than 800 acres.
Village Properties
Inside, glass walls and cathedral ceilings in the living room and dining room keep the outdoors close. Views from just about every room reflect a rugged, hilly landscape.
Poured concrete steps lead into a forest of mature oaks.
Village Properties
A chef’s kitchen features light wood cabinets and a center island topped with dark granite, which has room for casual dining. A large patio outside offers easy access for entertaining. The primary bedroom is located on an upstairs level. There’s also a guest wing with its own den and balcony.
Glass walls and cathedral ceilings bring light and stunning views inside.
Village Properties
Amenities on the property include a boutique vineyard planted with syrah grapes (for wannabe winemakers) and a roomy wine cellar. The finished garage accommodates four vehicles. It also has a multipurpose room and bathroom and could be transformed into an accessory dwelling unit.
A chef’s kitchen features light wood cabinets and a center island topped with dark granite.
Village Properties
Drought-tolerant landscaping surrounds the house, which also has a bocce court on one side.
Wood details create a calming vibe within.
Village Properties
McIntire sees the potential buyer as “someone who appreciates the architecture and the style” of the home and someone who values privacy as well as access to Los Angeles, about 120 miles away.
There are three bedrooms and three bathrooms.
Village Properties
Inside the gated community, residents may go horseback riding and hiking on the 10 miles of trails that start outside their back doors. Red-tailed hawks, bobcats, coyotes and deer also make their home here.
Residents of the community have access to private hiking and riding trails.
Village Properties
Jonata Springs Ranch has its own water company and paved roads. The home is within two miles of an elementary school and a middle school while Santa Ynez Valley Union High School is about six miles away. Lompoc, the Danish-themed town of Solvang as well as wine country towns of Ballard and Los Olivos are nearby.
The home was designed by architect Jan Hochhauser of Santa Barbara-based Hochhauser Blatter … [+] Associates.
A California Coastal compound home to visionary filmmaker James Cameron and his wife, Suzy Amis … [+] Cameron, has come on the market for $33 million.
Blake Bronstad
Oscar-winning director James Cameron has listed his sweeping ranch set along California’s Gaviota Coast for $33 million––parting with otherworldly Pacific Ocean views that inspired his five-part Avatar film franchise.
The 8,000-square-foot home he and his wife, Suzy Amis Cameron, purchased 24 years ago is sited on an oceanfront 102-acre parcel in a biodiverse haven that’s among the world’s richest.
Cameron’s favored writing retreats as he conjured Pandora, Avatar’s blue-hued world, were an upper library in the five-bedroom home and a 2,000-square-foot guest house set on a rise to maximize the ineffable coastal expanse.
Located within Hollister Ranch, the 102-acre property includes a main estate home with swimming pool … [+] and tennis court, a guest house, two barns, an equestrian facilities and a ranch office.
Eric Foote
“I would just bounce up there and sequester myself for months on end,” says Cameron of writing most of the first Avatar script and about half of the next two installments. “Actually, right through four and five because all those scripts are done.”
The family switched to a plant-based diet in 2012 and, as environmental advocates, the couple employs experimental techniques when farming thousands of New Zealand acreage they own, along with about 10,000 acres in Saskatchewan. They’ve founded a holistic school and have been vanguards in numerous ecological ventures.
The architectural wood and glass main residence features soaring beams and Rocky Mountain quartzite … [+] slab floors.
Blake Bronstad
The pioneering couple’s ocean-adjacent land is among 136 parcels within the 14,400-acre gated Hollister Ranch, established in 1971 as a nature preserve shouldered by 8.5 miles of pristine shoreline. Residential development is restricted to 2 acres on each of the land’s approximate 100-acre parcels. A 250-year tradition of cattle ranching continues on virtually all of the preserve’s coastal spread with up to one-half million pounds of Angus beef shipped annually.
The Camerons’ wood and glass home opens to soaring beam ceilings and includes two executive offices, a gym, media room and game room. Set along the south-facing Gaviota Coast, the sunset-drenched residence cradles a lagoon-style pool and lounge area wreathed by curved palms that recalls the tropics. Off-grid-ready, the solar-powered home is both water and food autonomous, given its three-quarter acre garden.
“The bare bones of the house are California rustic,” says Cameron, citing Hollister Ranch master builder Bob Curtis who erected the structures in the 1980s. “It feels rural, but it’s also quite bold, architecturally. It’s very comfortable. It’s not precious.”
Walls of windows in the living room take in coastal bluffs and scenes.
Blake Bronstad
Upon purchase, the couple ripped out carpeting and installed irregular slabs of Rocky Mountain quartzite, patterning floors with cream, gold and rust hues. The great room’s Brazilian hardwood beams were stripped of stain and paint and then restored to a natural burnished finish. The expansive sweep of timber ascends to clerestory windows and then angles over the dining room and kitchen, which is inset with a vaulted peak.
The two-story home’s bold angles frame views of coastal bluffs and scenes of migrating whales, dolphin pods and rafts of sea otters. The straight-ahead view is of San Miguel Island, the westernmost of the Channel Islands.
The kitchen’s sugar maple butcher-block table has hosted the bulk of Cameron family meals. “The dining room seats 14 and, when we really need space, we come out onto a big landing where we can seat 30,” Cameron says.
Angled beams and rich woodwork draw the eyes upward in the massive cook’s kitchen.
Blake Bronstad
The angled beams continue in the primary suite and are matched by oak plank flooring. The rooms, which include a fireplace, are swaged with Balinese fabric, furthering the tropical view beyond the windows.
“We have a lot of Balinese sculptures and woodwork around, an overlay of Indonesian motifs,” says Cameron. There’s one Greco-Roman nod in the great room: a colossal 800-pound stone head depicting Dionysius, its elvish look a match for a Cameron film.
“It’s from a facade of a hotel in New York,” Cameron says. “A gift from Bill Paxton.”
The ranch’s untamed land also includes a 4,795-square-foot equestrian facility with paddocks and ranch offices outfitted with a caretaker’s quarters and four apartments.
There are five bedrooms within 8,000 square feet of living space. Pictured is the primary suite, … [+] which includes a fireplace.
Blake Bronstad
There are two barns. “I’ve kept helicopters there,” says Cameron of the larger 24,000-square-foot barn. The barn was also a proving ground, he adds, “used when I was working on my subs and robotic equipment for expeditions,” which include 33 trips the intrepid “Titanic” director has made to the RMS Titanic and a solo descent he mastered to the lowest portion of the Mariana Trench.
The property also has a tennis court and permitted helipad.
The Camerons were reached at the tail end of a five-day 30-member family reunion held at the ranch. “We’re down to two nephews,” says Suzy Amis Cameron, speaking from the ranch. Post-gathering, her husband was working from his 100,000-square-foot Manhattan Beach studio where he was patched in before flying to New Zealand that evening.
Bedroom walls swaged with Balinese fabric, furthering the tropical view beyond the windows.
Blake Bronstad
Family has been central to the Camerons during their two-decade-plus stay at the ranch and it’s partly why they’re selling. The couple’s three children are “all pretty much out on their own now,” the Canadian-born director says. “And on Avatar, I’m working in Wellington and Los Angeles. And on the new Alita: Battle Angel films, I’ll be working in Austin, so it just didn’t make sense for us anymore.”
Adds Suzy Amis Cameron: “Our hope is that someone will come in with young children or decide to have children and enjoy it.”
The couple warmly recalls their children’s adventures: Checking tide tables; learning names of multitudinous creatures in the coastal ecosystem; foraging; taking mountain treks; riding horses named Tex, Monkey and Okie; and caring for donkeys, goats and a pig.
The sprawling garden on the property features roughly 150 different crops.
Blake Bronstad
“They were always coming home with some kind of critter, including a baby bobcat we named Rex,” James Cameron says. “They raised him and then released him back into the wild––he came back when he was an adult and ate Simon, our turkey.”
“You could feed 40, 50 people out of the gardens,” says Cameron, adding that the home’s large pantry is well-stocked. “The ranch runs on solar and wind, so it can be completely off-grid for as long as necessary. It’s got built-in battery storage that’s extensive enough to support the entire hundred-kilowatt system. There’s a sense of security and sanctuary here.”
The property is has a water well on the property for irrigation plus domestic water supplied by the … [+] Santa Anita Mutual Water Company.
Blake Bronstad
Drakes Beach, with its world-renowned surf break, is less than a quarter of a mile from the house. “There’s nothing between us and the beach,” Cameron says. “You go down, look left and right and there’s just nobody. It’s very, very rare.”
Hollister Ranch operates three cabañas along the sandy stretch that residents can reserve. Amenities include showers, restrooms and barbecue facilities.
Santa Barbara County’s 76-mile Gaviota Coast is Southern California’s largest stretch of undeveloped coastline. Bordered by the Channel Islands National Park, termed the “Galápagos of North America,” the fragile wildlife corridor provides a safe harbor for numerous rare and endangered species.
World-renowned surfing spot Drakes Beach is less than a quarter of a mile from the Camerons’ home.
Blake Bronstad
The astounding array of interconnected ecosystems––intertidal habitats, estuaries, grasslands, coastal scrub and striking bluffs––were favored by the Chumash Native Americans who settled the land nearly 10,000 years ago.
“It was sacred land,” Cameron says. “The Chumash called the whole area the Western Gate because it was where their souls departed across the ocean at the end of their lives. And you kind of feel that. It affects you at a subconscious level.”
Those are a few of the descriptors that typically accompany the category of “textural white wine.” Varieties like viognier, chardonnay, friulano, gewürztraminer and roussanne are safe bets for this category, which for me represents a welcome cool-down from the summer heat and a shift into more substantial meals to fortify our bodies against the chill and gusts of autumn wind.
What accounts for the “texture” of textural white wines?
Usually the texture of a wine refers to its mouthfeel, or the weight and sensation of a wine when you sip it. Think silky or round or tannic, that grippy sensation most often used in reference to red wine for its polyphenols released from the grape skins as well as its treatment in oak. In white wines, “texture” as a description is more easily an indicator of particular grapes or blends of grapes (viognier, for example, has a distinctly different feel than pinot grigio), origin of the wine (such as gewürztraminer from Alsace, chardonnay from Alto Adige or friulano from Friuli), and treatment in the winery (skin contact, clay amphorae and oak vessels).
Those are all details that add to the “plot” or the narrative of a textural white wine, that enrich and enhance a wine lover’s experience.
Here are two wines I’ve tasted recently (and the foods to go with them) that embody the category of textural white wine. Consider them, also, as one of several closely-related wines that are typical of their place: the first example is a specific wine made from müller thurgau grapes in the Alto Adige region of Italy, though I can just as readily recommend certain grüner veltliners or kerners from the same region. For the second example, the “adjacent” wines I’d recommend — grüner veltliner, that is — are typical of their place thanks to the winemaker’s devotion to the terroir of the eastern Santa Ynez Valley.
Sommelier pouring white wine into long-stemmed wineglass
getty
2021 Erste + Neue Müller Thurgau
Though used predominantly (and not often favorably) in Germany, the müller thurgau grape takes on a particularly hearty expression in the mountainous region of Italy’s Alto Adige. There, after fermentation at low temperatures, the wine takes on nutty, floral aromas that are unusually robust. The aroma complements the medium-bodied mouthfeel of this wine, delivering an unexpected twist on a textured white wine made from an unexpected variety.
Special note on food pairing: I poured this wine with a dinner of pork medallions in lemon-caper sauce; the wine accentuated the tang of the capers with lemon zest and juice while also adding bright flavors of elderflower and herbs.
Some white varieties don’t jump to mind as substantial enough for the textured wine category — pinot grigio, for example, or albariño or sauvignon blanc. There are exceptions to every rule, however, as this sauvignon blanc from winemaker Kathy Joseph attests. The texture results partly from its age (2016), partly from its gentle oak treatment, and partly from the different intentional layers that have been added: Joseph fermented the wine in equal proportions of stainless steel, neutral barrels, and new Damy French oak. There is a sense also of Joseph’s mastery cultivated over 30 years of farming this specific grape in the specific place of Happy Canyon in California’s Santa Barbara in the eastern Santa Ynez Valley.
Special note on food pairing: I opened this bottle, mindful of this article about textured white wines. Obviously it fit the bill and, moreover, it offered a beautiful complement to our family meal later that day of roasted butternut squash soup and hearty grain bread. Both the wine and the food were studies in balance / counter-balance: light on the palate (the vegetables in the soup and the sauvignon blanc grape) yet also substantial (the roasted squash and the grain bread plus the aged, gently-oaked wine).
