It’s clear that Nick Luis and Kristin Harris Luis relish the hilarity of life.
Take the couple’s brand-new label, Cote of Paint Wine. With a playful nod to France’s “côtes” (“regions on hillsides or slopes”), they released three vintages and launched the website on Feb. 29 — leap year 2024.
“We thought it would be fun to launch then,” Harris Luis said.
Cote of Paint’s debut includes three reds: a 2018 pinot noir from Duvarita Vineyard, a 2020 grenache from Christy & Wise and a 2021 sangiovese from Coquelicot.
The Luises launched the label with 100 cases and hope to grow to 150 per year.
Their focus is on vineyards that are organic or biodynamic, Luis said.
“We want to work with fruit that gets us excited,” he said.
Harris Luis believes that Santa Barbara County “is slowly getting the credit it deserves.”
Together, the couple have decades of experience in Santa Barbara County’s wine industry — although when they started, their only goal was to funnel their earnings toward careers in medicine. The two met at California State University, San Diego — “back when our palates were newer,” Harris Luis said.
“We thought, let’s get fun jobs in the wine industry and save for medical school,” she said.
For 10 years, Luis has managed retail sales at Dragonette Cellars in Los Olivos. While his wife also worked in that tasting room, in operations for Jackson Family Wines and for Margerum Wine Co., more recently she has focused on cellar work with Dragonette Cellars, where she and her husband launched their label with a barrel of 2018 pinot noir.
The couple learned hospitality and marketing while working in DTC (direct to consumer) sales at Dragonette, pouring “great wine in a great space” and engaging in conversation with guests, “learning all about connections (made) through a wine brand,” Luis said. The two call Dragonette’s owners “inspirational” and “our mentors.”
The Luises’ solo barrel of pinot noir aged for three years in Dragonette’s Buellton cellar before a name literally presented itself to the couple. (Around the winery in Buellton, the barrel was affectionately known as “pipsqueak,” according to Cote of Paint’s website).
It was 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and “we were sitting around the fire pit one night,” musing over possible label names, when Luis reiterated the couple’s goal, his wife recalled. “He said, ‘We just want to throw a coat of paint’ on traditional winemaking.”
That was her “ah ha” moment, she recalled — “coat” of paint could be spun into “cote,” a playful pun honoring the distinguished regions of France. Suddenly, the lonely barrel of pinot noir had a name.
Their label showcases “old school meets new school,” Luis noted, with a “text heavy” format that utilizes old-fashioned fonts, including this line: “Better Than Pizza.”
For now, sales are direct to consumer via some local retail outlets and their website, coteofpaintwine.com.
Harris Luis debuted the wines at the grand tasting during the recent Women Winemakers and Culinarians Celebration, will pour at the Garagiste Wine Festival in Los Angeles on June 22 and will participate in the June 1 Black Food & Wine Experience in Oakland, she said.