Our Story

Hav­ing no for­mal edu­ca­tion in wine­mak­ing, Kevin has made up for it by read­ing a lot of books, farm­ing, mak­ing (and cer­tain­ly con­sum­ing!) a lot of wine in the last thir­ty five years. He start­ed mak­ing wine in 1992 in the base­ment of the Topan­ga, Cal­i­for­nia home that he and Paula built in 1990.

In 1996, he plant­ed a half acre of Syrah on their Topan­ga prop­er­ty. With­in a year that was expand­ed to 1 ¹⁄₂ acres and ulti­mate­ly, he start­ed a small bond­ed win­ery called Jus­si­la Vine­yard. A lot of buzz fol­lowed, and he fool­ish­ly start­ed dream­ing about get­ting far more serious.

In 2004, Paula, Kev­in’s bet­ter half and enabler, allowed him to pur­sue the dream. They moved the fam­i­ly to Paso Rob­les with the pur­chase of 80 acres on Chim­ney Rock Road in the Ade­lai­da area. Since mov­ing north they’ve built a home on the prop­er­ty, built the wine pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty and tast­ing room, plant­ed a vine­yard and olive orchard.

Kevin’s all-con­sum­ing pas­sion for this project is obvi­ous when you vis­it kukku­la. Many days you’ll find him in the tast­ing room, where you can wit­ness this passion.

Paula (Schwab) Jus­si­la worked for 25 years in adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing in Los Ange­les before start­ing kukku­la with her hus­band (and wine­mak­er), Kevin Jus­si­la, in 2004. She pri­mar­i­ly helps out on the busi­ness side of the win­ery, focus­ing on mar­ket­ing, PR, event plan­ning, and over­all macro deci­sions for kukku­la. Beyond that, she is the chief errand offi­cer, in addi­tion to keep­ing track of the Jus­si­la kids. You can often find her in the tast­ing room on week­ends and dri­ving all over the Cen­tral Coast on the weekdays.

I am born and raised in Thou­sand Oaks and attend­ed Cal Poly San Luis Obis­po, grad­u­at­ing with a degree in Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment and Pro­tec­tion. While attend­ing Cal Poly, I worked my first har­vest and right away knew it was some­thing I want­ed to pur­sue. I always have liked wine, but being part of the process of mak­ing it real­ly intrigued me and sparked my inter­est even more so. I worked a cou­ple har­vests at a win­ery in San Luis Obis­po, most­ly with fruit from the Edna Val­ley area. Want­i­ng a change of scenery, I stum­bled upon this won­der­ful team and prop­er­ty here at kukku­la. My pas­sion for wine­mak­ing has tru­ly grown here, cre­at­ing wines with Kevin, that show our sense of place in this ter­roir. When I am not at work I enjoy surf­ing, hiking/​camping, and hang­ing with friends, usu­al­ly drink­ing some good wine.