The Santa Ynez Valley

Solvang

Home from Las Vegas, we grabbed some lunch and then hopped into my 30-year-old Porsche 911 SC and aimed it south on 101.  It’s a pretty dull freeway drive through the agriculture of the Salinas Valley until you get down to Paso Robles, where the scenery starts to get more interesting.  We were headed for the Santa Ynez valley, in Santa Barbara County, made famous by the 2004 movie Sideways.  In the film, Miles and Jack stay at the Day’s Inn in Buellton, but we decided to stay in the heart of Solvang, the Danish capital of America.  It was a strange variety of culture shock walking around this little town in the evening with its steeply peaked copper roofs, timber-frame construction, and windmills, after having had breakfast in Las Vegas.  The population is a mere 5200, so the downtown is only a few square blocks, but there were groups of Japanese tourists on the streets, chattering in their choppy tongue.  There was a Japanese-language remake of the film in 2009, so that may be why, although the remake shifts the location to Napa. 

Firestone Winery

The next day we headed up Alamo Pintado Road through Los Olivos to the Firestone winery.  In the movie Miles and Jack, bored with the tour, sneak into the barrel room with the two women they’ve met, Maya and Stephanie.  We skipped the tour but were both taken with the Sauvignon Blanc, though all the whites we tasted seemed good, so we got a mixed case of 6 bottles of Sauvignon Blanc, 4 of Riesling, and 2 of Gewurztraminer.  Then I drove over to the nearby Fess Parker vineyard.  This is the tasting room where, in the film, Miles, who has just learned that his novel has been definitively rejected, insists on having his glass filled and finally, when the bartender refuses, guzzles the entire dump bucket.  The pictures of Parker in his Davy Crocket outfit took me back to my childhood (they had little wine-cork sized coonskin caps for sale), but we weren’t crazy about the wines. 

Ballard Canyon Road

I had taken the Porsche thinking it would be fun on the back roads, and it was.  On the way back to Solvang I took Ballard Canyon Road and after a section of tight twisty turns at the top, it opened into a wiggly straight where an Audi sedan was dawdling.  I beeped and punched it past him, the flat six howling, and then settled into a thrilling swift flight through the rest of the turns back to town.  The car handled beautifully and the fun of that one road made it worth putting up with the lack of luggage space, which put a cap on how much wine we could buy. 

 

Mosby

After an excellent lunch in town followed by an old-fashioned ice cream soda at a vintage fountain, we set out for a couple of southern wineries. Some friends had been to this region a few months before and had brought us a fine bottle of Pinot Noir from Sanford, so we were looking forward to visiting there. Unfortunately they had an event underway and consequently it was so crowded we could barely find room at the bar. And maybe my tongue had gotten frazzled by the chocolate soda, or the vintage we tasted was different, but the Pinot Noir just didn’t seem as delicious as the one they had brought us. To be honest, I don’t know how professional wine tasters do it. The same wine can taste quite different to me on different occasions. So without buying anything there, we cruised back down the road to a winery called Mosby that favored Italian varietals. Frieda, after all, is partial to all things Italian. And so of course she did find a few bottles of red to buy there, as well as a raspberry dessert wine. If you go, be sure to check out the psychedelic restroom, which has a continual light show going on inside.

 

I think this area is a nice getaway if you live in L.A., but I prefer the Napa, or the Sonoma valley.  Both the wineries and the wine are better there, and for us it’s half the distance.  So, while I’m glad we checked this area out, I don’t think we’ll be going back anytime soon.