Sandhi

Many winery owners have a long family history of winemaking. Not Raj Parr. One of the founders of Sandhi, he was raised in Calcutta, didn’t taste wine at all until he was 20 year old, and originally wanted to become a chef. His lightbulb moment came when studying at culinary school in New York and became helplessly bitten by the wine bug. A move to California exposed him to great vineyards – and the winemaker who was to become his business partner, Sashi Moorman. Committed and inspirational, they’re the Lennon and MacCartney of cool-climate Californian wine.

Sandhi’s wines come from the Santa Rita Hills, in California’s southern Central Coast. A narrow, austere strip of land between the Pacific and the dessicated interior, it’s a cool, rocky, inhospitable place where vines – and winemakers – have to struggle. Sandhi’s focus is on making small batch, single-vineyard wines – mostly Chardonnay or Pinot Noir – with a distinctive house style, which they describe as ‘Less is More’, meaning flavours from the vineyards are altered as little as possible by the winemaker. Using large, old barrels and concrete tanks, their wines are savoury, elegant and faithful expressions of a unique, cool-climate terroir.