Jamie Knee Joins Decanter as Contributing Writer, Bringing Wine Travel and Santa Barbara Wine to a Global Audience
Jamie Knee, Wine Travel Writer, Decanter
Wine has taken me around the world. Now it has taken my writing to Decanter.
I am incredibly excited to share that I have joined Decanter as a Contributing Writer, an opportunity that brings together so much of what I have spent my career building as a wine travel writer, global wine travel presenter, and founder of Petite Wine Traveler.
For years, I have said that wine is a passport to the world. It can take us into a landscape, a culture, a kitchen, a family tradition, and a community. It gives us a reason to travel more slowly, look more closely, and understand a destination through the people who shape it.
My work has always been about looking beyond the glass to the people, landscapes, food, traditions, and culture that make a wine region worth traveling for. Through Decanter, I now have the opportunity to bring more of those stories. I will begin with Santa Barbara Wine Country and California wine, and share them with an international audience. Jamie Knee, Decanter Contributing Writer
Wine Travel Writing Through the Lens of Place
My approach to wine writing has always begun with place.
I want to know who planted the vines and why. I want to understand what grows beside them, what people cook with the wine, how a region has changed, which traditions are being protected, and who is taking chances on what comes next.
That curiosity has taken me through wine regions around the world. However, it has also repeatedly brought me back home to Santa Barbara Wine Country, one of the most dynamic wine regions in California.
My first work for Decanter begins close to home in Santa Barbara. Here, remarkable diversity exists within a relatively compact stretch of the California Central Coast. The region gives a wine travel writer almost everything one could hope for. These include distinctive landscapes, deeply individual producers, celebrated vineyards, creative winemakers, evolving hospitality, and a culture that still feels remarkably personal.
For me, writing about Santa Barbara wine is not simply about explaining varieties, vintages, ratings and appellations. Instead, it is about telling the larger story of why people should care about this place.
Bringing Santa Barbara Wine Into an International Conversation
Decanter describes itself as the world’s leading wine media brand, reaching more than 2.2 million people each month across print, digital, and social channels and engaging wine audiences in more than 100 countries.
That international perspective is particularly meaningful to me.
I have long believed that California wine deserves to be understood not only through its most famous regions, but through the smaller communities, personalities, vineyards, and cultural stories that make the state so compelling to explore.
Santa Barbara County is very much part of that conversation.
From the Sta. Rita Hills and Santa Ynez Valley to Ballard Canyon, Happy Canyon, Los Olivos, and beyond, Santa Barbara Wine Country offers a remarkable intersection of wine, agriculture, food, hospitality, and travel. It is also my home, which gives me the opportunity to return repeatedly. Therefore, I can follow stories over time and understand the people behind the wines beyond a single visit.
That combination of local access and global perspective has become increasingly important to my work as a wine travel writer.
Jamie Knee, Wine Travel Writer at Rincon Hill Farms, Santa Barbara Wine Country
Wine as a Passport
My philosophy has always been captured in one phrase: Wine as a Passport.
A bottle can transport us long before we board a plane. It can introduce us to an island in the Mediterranean, a hillside in Spain, an emerging wine region in Mexico, an English vineyard, or a small pocket of California that someone may never have thought to visit. But the real magic begins when wine inspires us to go there.
Wine travel is about that transition from tasting something to wanting to understand where it came from. It is about meeting the farmer, walking the vineyard, eating the local food, discovering the town, staying another night, and leaving with a relationship to a place that did not exist before.
That is why wine travel, enotourism, and destination storytelling have become central to my work across editorial media, television, speaking, presenting, and hospitality. Writing for Decanter is a natural extension of that philosophy.
A Career Built Around Wine Travel Media
My work today spans several parts of the wine and travel world.
Alongside my role as a Contributing Writer for Decanter, I write the weekly Petite Wine Traveler column for the Montecito Journal. I also contribute wine segments to KEYT News Channel 3 12 in Santa Barbara. Furthermore, I am the creator, host, and co producer of the upcoming TV Show Petite Wine Traveler Explores: California.
As a global wine travel presenter and Forbes Travel Guide Speaker, I also bring wine travel storytelling into live environments, from conferences and hospitality experiences to wine regions and destinations. Across all of those platforms, the purpose remains remarkably consistent. I want to make wine feel connected to the world around it.
The vineyard matters. The food matters. The hotel where someone experiences the wine matters. The people matter. The landscape, architecture, customs, history, and conversations around the table matter. Together, they create the sense of place that travelers remember.
Jamie Knee, Decanter Wine Travel Writer in Sta. Rita Hills.
What Comes Next
Being a Decanter contributing writer is an exciting new chapter, but it also reinforces something I have been building toward for years: a career dedicated to telling the stories of wine through travel, culture, hospitality, and human connection.
I am especially excited to continue sharing the stories of Santa Barbara Wine Country, and California wine with an international audience while remaining curious about the broader wine world and the destinations, established and emerging, that are reshaping the way we travel through wine. Visit Santa Barbara Wine Country
There will always be another vineyard to walk, another winemaker to meet, another table to gather around, and another place whose story begins with something poured into a glass.
That, for me, is what it means to be a wine travel writer. And it is why I still believe that wine may be one of the most beautiful passports we have.
Jamie Knee is a wine travel writer, global wine travel presenter, Contributing Writer for Decanter, Forbes Travel Guide Speaker, and founder of Petite Wine Traveler. Based in Santa Barbara, California, her work focuses on wine travel media, enotourism, luxury hospitality, culture, and destination storytelling.
