Nestled among boutique shops & restaurants, the Consilience tasting room is located on Grand Avenue in the wine country town of Los Olivos, California. The tasting room is open to the public seven days a week.
The philosophy at Consilience has been to not only create expressive, reliably high quality wines, but also to put that wine in the bottle for a reasonable price that is far below what comparable quality wines would cost. We are in part able to do that by making our wines in a more commercially oriented wine making facility rather than a glamorous estate chateau. There are no fancy winery tours, but we hope you enjoy the value and reasonably priced wine this allows us to pass on.
"Consilience" is an old scientific word first defined by 19th century philosopher William Whewell as a way to describe the interlocking explanations of cause and effect among disciplines.
The story of Consilience, the winery, began as a more humble interlocking of ideas among friends setting out with an inspiration to simply make the best wines possible in the Santa Barbara wine country. And this story does not begin with a vast dot.com fortune, but rather in a hospital emergency room. Luckily all involved were on the giving side of medical attention rather than receiving.
Tom & Jodie had just moved to Santa Barbara to begin Tom's residency in Radiology at Cottage Hospital while Jodie began a new career in customer service for a medical device manufacturer. Brett was working as a paramedic and Monica as an emergency room nurse, all working overtime to survive the formidable cost of living in Santa Barbara. The collective budget was more in line with cheap beer in recycleable bottles than fine wine, but they did get together frequently and managed to enjoy the occasional good bottle.
Brett's interest in the wine industry had actually already begun during an old college class and with seasonal work at the Santa Barbara winery. They all wanted to learn more about wine in general, and over a bottle one night decided on a long weekend getaway to explore the Napa & Sonoma wine country. Somewhere between the wine tasting, mud baths and cucumber water they all realized there was a better way of life out there, and the idea behind Consilience was hatched.
Lacking a family oil fortune they all continued their day jobs for several years while gradually learning about what people really enjoyed in wine, and what it would take to make it in the wine business. Brett finished his masters degree in eonology and viticulture, and burning the midnight oil in a shared facility the first vintage for Consilience was produced in 1997. The first wines went out to friends, family and colleagues who helped spread the word about these new wines that were well received by both consumers and the media.
Working from home they processed orders in the evenings and weekends, packaged wines for shipment in the garage, and endured the usual problems of any start-up as the business grew.
Through years of teamwork and the good fortune of support from customers throughout the country, Consilience has become more widely known as a reliable producer of exciting, expressive and approachable wines relfective of the Santa Barbara area. Consilience wines can be found in restaurants and wine shops in many states, and they enjoyvistors from across the country at their beautiful tasting room in Los Olivos, California.