Born of an obsession with Santa Barbara County terroir, we formed Brewer - Clifton in the early 1990’s. We both had significant sales and production experience with a multitude of Santa Barbara County wineries, and always felt compelled to push the limits of the fruit from the area further than our previous employers had set forth to do. We set out to put the essence of the best vineyards in the area into a bottle.

Brewer - Clifton focus solely on site-expressive wines from the Sta. Rita Hills appellation using Chardonnay and Pinot Noir as voices of place. The area's long growing seasons and diversity of marine-based soils combine to produce dynamic and explosive wines with great purity and precision. Each vineyard site is nurtured identically, allowing the pedigree of place to play the most significant role in our portfolio of wines.

From our initial production of 1996, our pursuit has been to express the individual identity of particular sites within our appellation. While that approach remains a strong driving force behind our efforts, we elected to demonstrate a more complete voice of place beginning with the spectacular 2007 harvest. From this point forward, we expect to release a Sta. Rita Hills Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, capitalizing on the blending or our most heralded vineyard holdings. Just like a quartet is incomparable to a solo, it is neither the goal nor the intent to compare our appellation wines with our vineyard-specific bottlings. The two should be interpreted as separate manifestations along a lateral plain where the difference of expression is a celebrated attribute.

In addition to our collective efforts, Steve Clifton also produces wine under his own label, called Palmina, which focuses exclusively on Italian varietals, and is the winemaker at Tritono, an Argentine producer of Malbec. Greg Brewer produces wine under the diatom label, as well as being the winemaker at Melville, a Santa Rita Hills winery dedicated to estate grown Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Syrah.

Brewer-Clifton wines are only available in small quantities. Total production averages between 7,000 and 8,000 cases annually.

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