An influential California winemaking duo has parted ways.
Raj Parr and Sashi Moorman, who together helped establish a new paradigm for lower-alcohol, higher-acid West Coast Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays during the 2010s, will no longer work together. Moorman will continue to run the three wineries they once collaborated on – Santa Barbara County’s Domaine de la Cote and Sandhi, and Oregon’s Evening Land – while Parr shifts his focus to his Phelan Farm winery in San Luis Obispo County.
Though the split was formalized only in the last few weeks, it had been a long time coming. Both vintners said that Parr had been less involved in Domaine de la Cote, Sandhi and Evening Land since the pandemic, when he moved to Cambria to grow grapes and make wine at Phelan Farm. “It wasn’t a partnership after I came to Cambria,” Parr said.
There were creative differences, too. “That alignment that we had in the beginning has changed,” Moorman said. “We started with classical winemaking, and he is now pursuing what is deeply and almost spiritually important to him.”
Sashi Moorman, seen in Santa Barbara County in 2012, has been the influential winemaker behind Domaine de la Cote, Sandhi, Evening Land, Piedrasassi and other wines. (Joe Gosen/For the S.F. Chronicle)
While Moorman has largely stayed the course with classically styled Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, Parr embraced natural wine and esoteric grapes, planting obscure varieties like Jacquere and Savagnin, and farming with an uncommonly low level of intervention.
Parr did not have equity in Domaine de la Cote, Sandhi or Evening Land, which are all owned by Texas venture capitalist Steven Webster. In addition to operating those businesses, Moorman also owns Piedrasassi, a Syrah-focused winery and bakery, and is the CEO of Provignage, a wine consultancy.
When Parr and Moorman first met in the early 2000s, sparks flew over a shared love of “old-fashioned wines” like aged Burgundy, Champagne and Barolo, Moorman said. He was then the winemaker at Santa Barbara County’s Stolpman Vineyards, and came to San Francisco to sell wine to Parr, the wine director at Michael Mina restaurant. They immediately realized that they both “were enamored with these relics.” They’d save up and obsessively search for bottles from their two favorite producers in the Rhone Valley – Rayas and Chave – to drink together.
Those tastings instilled a sense of rebellion against the bolder, higher-alcohol, California wines that were popular in the early aughts. Parr “really was the greatest sommelier there ever was,” Moorman said. “He really wanted to know who was behind every single bottle of wine, and he put in the time and effort to go visit all those people.”
Like many sommeliers, Parr itched to make wine. He started Parr Selections using purchased fruit. By the mid-aughts, he enlisted Moorman as its winemaker. Around the same time, the two became involved in Evening Land Vineyards, a buzzy Oregon project funded by a supergroup that included Webster, Hollywood producer Mark Tarlov and New York restaurateur Danny Meyer.
2009 Evening Land Vineyards Seven Springs Vineyard Pinot Noir. (Craig Lee/For the S.F. Chronicle)
Evening Land “grew into a behemoth,” Moorman said. From its founding in 2006 to 2012, they brought on stars like Burgundy winemaker Dominique Lafon, bought vineyards in California and built a winery in France. In 2012, Moorman and Parr took over Evening Land’s operations with backer Charles Banks, who was on a California-wine investment spree and had bankrolled their launch of Sandhi, envisioned as a more affordable Pinot Noir and Chardonnay label from Santa Barbara County, a couple of years prior.
By 2013, Parr and Moorman spun off one of Evening Land’s vineyards as a separate entity, Domaine de la Cote, a higher-end estate label from the Sta. Rita Hills.
Banks, whose wine holdings were worth an estimated $200 million at their peak, became embroiled in scandal, eventually pleading guilty in 2017 to defrauding a financial advisee, the NBA star Tim Duncan. He was sentenced to four years in prison. Parr, Moorman and Webster severed ties with him.
Scandal notwithstanding, the wineries became darlings of a movement that former Chronicle wine editor Jon Bonné came to call “the new California,” a cadre of winemakers that rejected overblown, jammy flavors and embraced experimental techniques and grapes. Sandhi and Domaine de la Cote were the poster children of In Pursuit of Balance, a prominent organization co-founded by Parr that promoted lower-alcohol California Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
Raj Parr, right, pours a glass of Domaine de la Cote at the In Pursuit of Balance tasting in San Francisco in 2016. (James Tensuan/For the S.F. Chronicle)
Over time, however, a chasm grew between the once-kindred palates. Parr became enamored with the natural wine movement while working on his 2018 book, “The Sommelier’s Atlas of Taste” (co-written with Jordan Mackay). He grew restless with Pinot and Chardonnay, becoming fascinated instead by Pais grapes from Temecula, Alicante Bouschet from Rancho Cucamonga and Palomino from Lodi. Moorman helped him start the Raj Parr Wine Club, a series of one-off experiments, as a creative outlet.
For their shared wineries, Parr said that Moorman “was always the technical winemaker,” but that he had contributed “ideas and philosophies behind the scenes.” Now, Parr wanted to be hands-on with winemaking and farming.
Greg Phelan, who had sold grapes from his Cambria ranch to Sandhi, agreed to lease 11 acres to Parr, giving him carte blanche with the land. Beginning in 2020, Parr planted a menagerie of grape varieties, drawing heavily from cultivars native to France’s Jura and Savoie regions. In 2024, he bought a nearby winery, Stolo Vineyards, now the headquarters for his collection of wine brands that he calls the Parr Collective.
Initially, after moving to Cambria, Parr was still part of Domaine de la Cote, Sandhi and Evening Land, primarily helping with blending, but wound down his involvement. Eventually, Parr said, he didn’t want the wineries to be capitalizing on his name anymore.
“I could appreciate his quest to be deeply connected to vineyards and to winemaking,” Moorman said, and in September, they called it quits.
Now, on separate paths, each is pursuing his own vision. Parr is further embedding in Cambria, planting additional vineyards around the Stolo winery and continuing to tinker with Poulsard, Trousseau and his other rarefied grapes. He also plans to introduce $30 Pinot and Chardonnay from the San Luis Obispo Coast (which would be in Sandhi’s competitive set). “I just want to farm vineyards,” Parr said. “I want a simple life. I want quiet.”
Moorman, too, has planted new vineyards for Sandhi in the Sta. Rita Hills and replanted about 50% of Evening Land’s acreage, experimenting with greater crop diversity at the Oregon estate. His interest in classic Pinot Noir and Chardonnay has not waned. “Maybe for someone like Raj, it can get kind of boring,” Moorman said.
“For me, the goal has never changed,” Moorman continued. “Every year we try to get closer to a probably unattainable goal. The perfect wine doesn’t exist, but that’s what we stay focused on.”
This article originally published at They changed the California wine paradigm. Now this winemaking duo is splitting up.
Dining and Cooking