Joseph Blair Wines

As is most of the wineries in the ghetto — there’s lots of great people to meet behind the counters and some good stories shared while tasting some great wines. Many of the tasting rooms offer deals to Unilocal or _​_​_​_​square check-​ins, so make sure you check in BEFORE you start your tasting.
For our visit to Blair Wines, one story in particular stood out and had to do with the gun shop located next door and the wall/​ceiling tiles between the two stores. I’ll leave it at that to imagine the rest…
My favorite too, was the Ghetto Red which is VERY interesting blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Petite Verdot, a blending grape used quite often in Bordeaux style wines. If we weren’t told what this wine was made of, we would have a very hard time figuring it out. All of their wines were very tasty and enjoyed the whole tasting experience. The wines are here are all done in small boutique batches — typically less than 100 cases, so you won’t find them in your local stores. Retail prices were actually pretty decent for the quality of wine.
Don’t forget to ask about the Jalama connection and make sure you visit their tasting room across the parking lot. Lasty, Blair offered some crackers and two wonderful cheeses to match their wines along with a fantastic chocolate truffle to end the tour! I’ll be back to the ghetto!

The great thing about the ghetto is that each tasting room will usually recommend another tasting room to check out next, usually also giving you a free tasting card as well. On recommendation from Jalama we hit up Joseph Blair. Very solid wines and another winery to look out for the in the future.
I will say that their tasting room attendant seemed very novice and very concerned with collecting our money. We were buying several bottles and though I had forgotten to give her our free tasting card she was going to charge us for the tasting anyway. I’m not sure when tasting rooms became so overly concerned with charging people for tastings even when people are buying. It’s something about Santa Ynez area that’s been rubbing me the wrong way lately…
But more importantly, back to the wine. Overall, a good experience. Though our attendant didn’t seem to know much about the wine, it’s quality did sort of speak for itself. We’ll probably be back.

The wine ghetto never disappoints.
We were visiting Jalamala wines which is right around the corner and the owner told us we had to stop by this location for a tasting. We drove on over and were pleasantly greeted and then served some delicious wines. I enjoyed them all, but really liked the ghetto white and ghetto red wine selections. Both are the kind of wines that would compliment any meal. They also have a great Gewürztraminer as well, very fruit forward and not nearly as sweet as I expected (which I appreciated).
This is a great place to stop by when visiting Lompoc.