Super Happy Sauvignon Blanc
Pairs with: Grilled shrimp skewers with zesty lime, fresh goat-cheese crostini, a crisp summer arugula salad, tortilla chips with fresh salsa verde, or even sweet-and-savory dishes like orange chicken.
Good for: Effortless patio sipping on a warm afternoon, tricking your palate into thinking you paid double for a boutique bottle, or pleasing fans of both New Zealand's racy crunch and Bordeaux's richer, tropical-tinged white wines.
Grape: 100% Sauvignon Blanc (Sustainably Farmed & Vegan).
I am from: Happy Canyon of Santa Barbara AVA, Central Coast, California, USA.
The Story: Super Happy is an absolute crowd-pleasing, vibrant white wine project masterminded by Andrew Jones, the visionary and fiercely creative winemaker behind the iconic Field Recordings label in Paso Robles. Andrew is famous in the California wine scene for acting as a vinous treasure hunter. He spends his time traveling the backroads of the state, tracking down underutilized, forgotten, or uniquely positioned vineyards, often striking hand-shake deals with farmers to help revitalize their vines in exchange for pristine fruit contracts.
For this cuvée, Andrew looks directly to the easternmost pocket of Santa Barbara County: the Happy Canyon of Santa Barbara AVA. This region functions as a fascinating natural climate engine. While it sits within a territory influenced by the Pacific Ocean, Happy Canyon is far enough inland to capture intense daytime heat, allowing the Sauvignon Blanc grapes to achieve glorious sugar concentration and shed any aggressively bitter green notes. Yet, at night, the coastal fog rolls backward into the canyon, causing temperatures to plunge and trapping an electric natural acidity within the berries.
In the cellar, Andrew sticks to a low-intervention, fruit-first philosophy. The grapes are picked under the cover of darkness to preserve fresh chemistry and immediately pressed into temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks. The juice is fermented cool using only native wild yeasts to protect its delicate aromatics. Crucially, the wine is left to age in stainless steel for an extended seven months before bottling. This patient, un-wooded aging program allows the wine's intense, roaring acidity to naturally integrate and calm down, building a surprisingly smooth and complete texture without ever using heavy oak manipulation.
Why You'll Love Me: It is bright, unapologetically fun, and beautifully expressive—a California Sauvignon Blanc that pairs a zesty, lip-smacking crunch with a lovely, satisfying tropical warmth. In the glass, it pours a beautiful pale straw-yellow with youthful silver reflections. The nose is a lively, sun-drenched playground, instantly bursting with a fragrant bouquet of fresh grapefruit peel, crisp green apples, and juicy pears, seamlessly layered with exotic top notes of tropical guava, pineapple, and a subtle, refreshing whisper of fresh-cut grass and faint jalapeño spice.
On the palate, it delivers a gorgeous structural surprise. It enters smoothly and coats the mouth with notes of apricot and lemon curd, but quickly transitions into a racy, mouthwatering mid-palate driven by a beam of salty lime and clean citrus zest. The seven months of stainless steel rest gives the wine a wonderfully polished, rounded texture that expertly balances the high-altitude freshness, sailing into a crisp, bone-dry finish marked by a clean mineral snap and a lingering trail of tropical fruit.
