TERRE ET SANG

Terre et Sang is learning as you grow, and growing as you learn…

Santa Barbara County is home a quite a bit of magic.. The landscapes are effortlessly beautiful - they leave you feeling comfortably far away from most things. The people are warm and friendly - proud and satisfied to live in such a unique place. The wines (of course) have a special personality… a confidence, a certainty, a call to be consumed. It’s also the kind of place where new things are still possible… where wine dreams can still be realized. In 2018 mother and son team Dalita and Duncan Harmon set out to try and make theirs become a reality.

To me, what makes their story different is also what makes it special - that the decision to forge a path in wine was based not on legacy, connections, business opportunity, or even experience.. instead it seems to have come purely out of curiosity and desire.

The desire to make world-class wine is something quite a few people share… the ability to actually do it can be more elusive - usually coming as a result of many years of training and access to the best possible grapes money can buy. For whatever it’s worth, Duncan had never actually made wine before, and at the beginning, some of the best grapes they had access to didn’t come from a top cru but instead from Dalita’s backyard in Los Olivos... Simple beginnings in a complicated industry. But, they did what they could with what they had and went out of their way to meet the people they respected most in the industry, turning them into friends and mentors… learning as they worked.

They ultimately knew in order to make the best possible wine that they would need the best possible fruit, so when they wanted grapes from Santa Barbara’s most iconic vineyard sites, they scheduled meetings with the growers, brought along samples of their earliest bottlings to share, and simply pled their case.. To their amazement, it actually worked. Now only a few years into the project, they have access to some of the region’s most sought after fruit.

The wines they are producing today have begun to achieve serious critical acclaim; it is safe to say that they are on their way. From almost nothing, they’ve achieved an incredible amount in record-setting time. It just might be that the most important achievements were enough of the tiny, little, hard-fought successes along the way to make them want to keep pushing forward against the grain. Hard work and big obstacles didn’t scare them off.

One of the things that excites me the most as a photographer is working on projects from the very beginning, or at least near to it. When I know that the pictures I take won’t just enhance the success of an already successful brand, but instead are taken to become an integral part of a new project’s original DNA, it means the pressure is on… I love working under pressure, and after a year of knowing and documenting Dalita and Duncan, my guess is that they do too. When success isn’t guaranteed but is surely required, the most interesting things can happen.

Photography for Terre et Sang is ongoing, beginning in the early part of 2022. Locations include Bien Nacido, Larner, Stolpman and Kimsey Vineyards, Terre et Sang’s winery on Santa Rosa Road, and their tasting room in Downtown Los Olivos.

www.terreetsang.com  ||  Website Collaborator :  Offset