Jamie Slone Wines is moving into a space at 23 E. De la Guerra St. in downtown Santa Barbara’s El Presidio area, and will serve wine made by local Doug Margerum. Happy Canyon Vineyards is also reportedly considering opening a wine-tasting room in neighborhood.

A new premium wine tasting room has opened at the historic downtown El Paseo in Santa Barbara.
Jamie Slone wines is on De La Guerra at the entrance to the Street in Spain walkway that features a narrow path through the shopping area. Next door is the Casa de la Guerra courtyard.

Local wineries expand with new tasting rooms in Los Olivos and Santa Barbara.

The Wine Collection of El Paseo brings together six dynamic wine projects – some well-established, some brand new—that aim to leverage the romantic, upscale appeal of Santa Barbara’s historic Presidio neighborhood. “This area is so cool,” winemaker Doug Margerum told me this week, after I bumped into him along one of El Paseo’s meandering cobblestone pathways. “But I don’t know if everyone walking this area realizes just how much we’ve got going on here, just off State.”

As a lover of Santa Barbara and even bigger lover of Santa Barbara wine, I’m happy to announce and cheers to Santa Barbara’s newest wine tasting neighborhood, the Wine Collection of El Paseo. Located in the heart of fine dining and high-end shopping on State Street, these 6 ultra-premium wine tasting rooms are the perfect pairing for an afternoon (or two!) of wining, dinning and shopping.

The new Wine Collection of El Paseo just added two new wineries to their collection, Happy Canyon Vineyard and Jamie Slone Wines.

Several local Santa Barbara vintners have joined forces, and are introducing the new Wine Collection of El Paseo. The collection of six ultra-premium winetasting rooms is grouped together at the Historic El Paseo center in the Presidio Neighborhood of downtown Santa Barbara. Located in the heart of the fine dining and high-end shopping area of State Street, the Historic El Paseo is currently home to the wine tasting rooms of Grassini Family Vineyards, Au Bon Climat Winery, and Margerum Wine Company with winemaker Doug Margerum recently opening MWC32, a separate tasting room which showcases his reserve and limited production wines. Joining this existing collection of tasting rooms is Happy Canyon Vineyard and Jamie Slone Wines.

Jamie Slone and his wife Kym may be new in town, but they seem to be fitting right in.

“We’re not winemakers. We’re you. We’re consumers.”

For Jamie Slone, that distinction – that he and his wife are entering the wine arena as avid wine drinkers, first and foremost – may well be the biggest driving force behind Jamie Slone Wines.

“We’re coming at this totally from the consumer’s standpoint,” he says, as his wife, Kym, adds, “And we’re putting out wines that we, ourselves, would want to drink.”

When Jamie and Kym Slone would travel as tourists to Santa Barbara, they found it hard to find winery experiences that celebrated the city’s rich history and Spanish architecture. “Where was the wine tasting room with red-tiled roofs?” Jamie recalled thinking. “I couldn’t find it.”

So the 52-year-old — whose financial success from his family radio empire in Tucson, Arizona, and the vacation-home real estate market previously fueled a five-year stint driving racecars — decided to deliver that combination of wine and Santa Barbara style himself. Today, Jamie Slone Wines.