April 22, 2025
There’s a version of California wine you’ve been sold before. It’s polished. Predictable. Built for wine clubs and corporate gifting. It’s not bad—it’s just… forgettable.
Scar of the Sea is not that.
It’s Mikey and Gina Giugni’s love letter to vineyards everyone else forgot. Not just old vines—ancient ones. Not just sustainable—spiritually aligned. These wines are fermented with wild yeast, aged in old barrels, and released without makeup. No gloss. No filter. Just grape, dirt, wind, and willpower. It’s not dogma—it’s just how they work.
Because this is what New California really looks like:
Two people, a surfboard, and a bunch of vineyards no one else wants to deal with. And the result? Wines that taste like they were made by people who never asked what would sell. Only what should exist.
Mikey came up in the Central Coast, surfboard in the truck bed, chasing the kind of vineyards that don’t show up on tasting room maps. Gina brings her own brilliance—both as a winemaker and as the founder of her own project, Lady of the Sunshine—a project rooted in regenerative farming and emotional fluency. If Scar of the Sea is the brainstem, Lady of the Sunshine is the heart. Together, they form something rare: an actual point of view.
They’re not just making wine. They’re resurrecting forgotten vineyards. Dry-farmed plots planted in the 1940s. Own-rooted vines that have survived drought, fire, and indifference. These are sites most wineries would write off as too inconvenient. Too low-yield. Too weird. And that’s exactly why Mikey and Gina are drawn to them.
Scar of the Sea is part of the New California, but not the Instagrammable kind. The real kind. The kind that says: What if we stop chasing scores and just listen to the vineyard? What if farming wasn’t an afterthought? What if we made wine that wasn’t trying smothered in new oak and vanilla extract?
Here’s what we’ve got in the shop right now:
2022 Bassi Vineyard Syrah (San Luis Obispo Coast)
Wind-scorched. Ocean-adjacent. Whole-cluster Syrah that smells like peppered steak and crushed violets but moves like poetry. Bassi is a limestone-heavy, fog-battered vineyard just miles from the Pacific. This Syrah isn’t loud—it’s sharp. Like a thought you can’t un-think.
2021 Galleano Ranch Alicante Bouschet (Cucamonga Valley)
This vineyard has no business still existing. But it does. Because the Galleano family never gave up on it. And neither did Mikey. Alicante is usually written off as a blending grape, but this bottle rewrites the narrative: black plum and blackberry, sage smoke, a touch of blood orange, and tannins that frame it like steel bones under silk.
2022 Lopez Vineyard Palomino (Fresno County)
Palomino, the grape behind Sherry, made dry, raw, and weirdly elegant. From 80-year-old vines rooted in beach sand in the middle of the Central Valley. Aromatically subtle but texturally complex—like a vinyl record with a little surface noise. You don’t drink this wine. You tune into it.
2023 Hofer Vineyard Grenache (Lodi)
This is the Lou Reed version of Grenache. Light-bodied but nervy. Cherry skin, cracked pepper, and herbal bite. From a vineyard farmed by a guy named Markus who treats the soil like a living organism. You’ll never look at Lodi the same way again—and that’s the point.
Scar of the Sea isn’t trying to impress you. That’s why it does.
Their wines matter because they protect something fragile: California’s agricultural soul.
If you want bland and safe, there’s a box store for that. If you want something honest—maybe even a little dangerous—you know where to find us.
These wines aren’t “easy.” But neither is anything worth caring about.
Available now at BayTowne Wine & Spirits
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