Houman Dahi never imagined becoming a vintner. Originally from Iran, he fled his homeland for Turkey as a teenager to escape the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. There, he completed high school and medical school before immigrating to the US to complete more medical training, first in New York City and then New Orleans.
After experiencing Hurricane Katrina’s devastation and staying for a few years to help rebuild the city, he and his family moved to California in 2008. During this time, his father purchased 17 acres in Ramona at 1,600 feet elevation and started growing grapes as a retirement project a few years later. It was both a good way to get some father-son time in and helped Dahi unwind from the high-stress hospital environment.
Dahi says the plan was to just grow a few varieties of grapes like Sangiovese, Syrah, and Petite Syrah to sell to wineries in the area. But when the pandemic hit, wineries stopped buying grapes. So Dahl hired a winemaker that year and by 2023, Sky Valley Cellars opened a tasting room on the property.
Since then, they’ve won a number of awards from local and international competitions, but Dahi says San Diego wineries still don’t get the recognition of other California wine regions. To him, it’s not a quality issue, it’s awareness. So he decided to bring their wine to a more accessible location. Sky Valley Cellars will open a new tasting room in Pinnacle Tower in Marina District later this year, likely in the fall.
The 1,400-square-foot space includes an outdoor patio, and will have a full kitchen serving small plates and pinsas (Roman-style pizzas), which use a mixture of wheat, soy, and rice flour for a lighter, lower-gluten dough. Everything will be curated to pair with wine (their own for now, with hopes to bring in others). It’ll also host educational workshops, and partner with local chefs for special events and food pairings.
Dahi may not have been born into a wine family, but he is committed to making sure the next generations know what treasures San Diego winemakers are capable of. “This is one way for us to be able to introduce our local quality wine to our community, and hopefully that would further increase the interest, and develop our region as a premium wine growing region,” he says.
Sky Valley Cellars will open at 530 Front Street in Pinnacle Tower, Marina District in fall 2026.
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Beth’s Bites
- Hotel food is shedding its lackluster reputation faster than an Eastern garter snake (shoutout to all you herpetologists out there), and Hotel Solea in Carlsbad seems to have gotten the memo. On March 4, modern Italian restaurant Verise will open its doors inside the new hotel, with a menu designed by resort chef Jason Luke and chef Riccardo Bilotta, who’s worked in illustrious kitchens like the two-Michelin-star Il Pellicano in Tuscany and three-Michelin-star El Celler de Can Roca in Spain. It’ll have wood-fired pizzas, pastas, and a whole bunch of other goodies that I guess we’ll have to taste to believe.
- And if Verise runs out of anything, it sounds like they’ll soon be able to pop over to the new location of Always Hungry Grocery & Goods to grab it. It’s set to open any day now at 325 Carlsbad Village Drive, and I know it’s taken the gang a little longer than they’d have liked, so best of luck to them in the last stretch.
- UTC is hardly suffering from a lack of dumplings, but it looks like Joyee Noodle House’s newest location is now open at 8935 Towne Centre Drive, Suite 100. This spot offers something the other five local locations don’t—a Taiwan-style breakfast menu.
- More good news for Ramona! Local coffee roasting company Manzanita Coffee Roasters will open its third café later this spring, coming after its Rancho Bernardo and Escondido locations. We love a local coffee success story.
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