History
The Dierberg family, who also farm in the Santa Maria Valley and at Star Lane in Happy Canyon, added this property as their Sta. Rita Hills holding, and their second generation, Ellen Dierberg-Milne and Michael Dierberg, run it now. Tyler Thomas, who apprenticed with Aubert de Villaine at Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, has been winemaker since 2013. The planting date is genuinely unsettled: most independent accounts say 2003, the family's own current site says the Dierbergs began cultivating in 2008, and one wine described as coming from fourteen-year-old vines in the 2017 vintage points back to 2003. The vineyard takes its name from the road it sits on.
The Site
Seventy acres running between roughly 300 and 700 feet on steeply sloping ground, thirteen to fourteen miles inland, along the northern of the appellation's two east-west road corridors between Lompoc and Buellton. Sources describe the exposure variously as southwest, south and west, which across a site this steep is likely all true of different sections. The soils are low-fertility sandy loam with rockier ground in certain blocks.
Vines and Blocks
Pinot Noir and Chardonnay alone. The Pinot Noir draws on Swan and Calera selections, heritage material rather than Dijon numbers, planted on deliberately low-vigour rootstocks. No named internal blocks are documented beyond references to rockier special sections. One caution for anyone reading labels: a separate vineyard planted in 2017 by the Hines family, with Sashi Moorman advising, also sits on Drum Canyon Road and is bottled by Sandhi as William Hines Estate. It shares the road name and nothing else.
The Wines
Dierberg bottles both varieties as Drum Canyon designates. Paul Lato's Stand by Me has been his Drum Canyon Pinot Noir since 2019, and before that he bottled the same fruit as C'est la Vie, a name he has also attached to Wenzlau fruit, which is a useful reminder that his cuvee names track intent rather than place. Migration bottles a designate, and Tyler's appellation Pinot Noir is now drawn primarily from here. The wines are among the appellation's more overtly structured, and Jeb Dunnuck scored the 2023 Stand by Me at 99 points.