What I Did on my Spring Vacation, Part III
The delayed final part! Read part I here, and part II here.
On Sunday we got up, packed and went into Cambria to do some shopping. When we go to Cambria we love checking out Artifacts Gallery, a really cool two part art gallery. Cambria is known for art, and this place is really top notch. Judy had been salivating over these really cool Mova Globes that move purely due to light energy via solar panels and the magnetic field of the earth. She got the Mars Globe:
And as I love Belle from Disney's Beauty and the Beast, I picked up this limited run of her called "The Enchanted Rose:
After walking about a bit more we packed up in the car and headed down south. But we had a lot of stops to makes: wineries in the Santa Ynez area where we had shipments to pick up.
First stop was Rancho Sisquoc Winery in the very southeastern end of the Santa Maria Valley. This area is the oldest viticultural area in California, being set as a grape growing area by the Spanish Crown when California was still Spanish territory in the New World. Rancho Sisquoc is out in the middle of nowhere, but makes amazing wines, and i especially love their Malbec. The signature note of Malbec is blackberry, and that particular note comes through in their Malbec like no other wine I've ever had -- it's almost like drinking a blackberry jam.
The other wine that Rancho is known for is their Sylvaner, a semi-sweet white that has been grown primarily in Germany and Alsace, but very rare in the USA. There is no other winery growing Sylvaner in California except for Rancho, and it's a very nice, light wine that goes well with everything
Rancho Sisquoc's mascot is a gorgeous black and white cat named Jezebel, who is ultra friendly and loves being petted. Unfortunately we didn't see her that day, but we did hear scraping around on the roof and the employees said they were sure she was walking around up there. She had been brought in to act as a mouser for the winery, but as she's so friendly and people have been giving her part of their lunches for years, they have to get a new
cat to mouse the place as she's gotten so big and lazy she won't go after mice anymore!
After a bit of tasting and getting our order, we continued along the wine trail down to Andrew Murray Vinyards. Andrew Murray is a younger guy in the wine scene in the Santa Ynez Valley, and had a working relationship with the Firestone family that makes today beer. The family owned the Firestone Vinyards, and Curtis Vineyards which is right next to Firestone on the Foxen Canyon Trail.
As the Firestone Family was putting far more of their time and effort into beer than wine, they sold the Firestone Winery to the Foley Family (which I mentioned in Part II of my travelogue) in 2007. The family kept Curtis but as they had developed a very good working relationship with Murray, they leased him the Curtis Vinyards site on a very low cost, long term lease. Murray then revamped the tasting room into a very modern spot, with a very nice members only lounge.
Andrew Murray makes mostly blends of wine, but one of our favorites is the Mourvedre, He also does a really, really good Syrah, and we picked up a couple bottles of the really dry Rose wine they're doing there. A very nice experience.
Lunch was picked up at Panino's, in Los Olivos, about ten minutes south of Andrew Murray. They make fantastic sandwiches, so we picked up a couple to go. Los Olivos is where part of the wine comedy Sideways was filmed, incluing the famous scene about Merlot. We got our sandwiches and headed to stop three, Lincourt Winery.
Lincourt is also one of the Foley Family wineries, and we joined their wine club years ago to capitalize on the fact we get to taste for free at all the Foley Family wineries and get a club discount. Lincourt makes mostly reds, but they do have two very nice Chardonnays they do on the premesis. Their real good wines though are Pinot Noirs and a Cabernet Sauvignon that is now sadly defunct for a few years. They pulled up all the Cab Sauv vines after the last harvest in 2013 and are now only planting new ones, so there will be no Cab for a couple more years there. Lincourt has a really cute, rustic tasting room contined in a yellow house, as you can see below, along with a great outdoor patio with tables for lunch or events, and a windmill that is their symbol.
We were very good and didn't pick up anything extra, just our wine shipment, and then headed down to our fourth spot of the day, Buttonwood Winery.
Buttonwood is actually a large farm on a 106 acre property that founder Betty Williams started in the area in the 1960s. They now have 39 acres given over to grape production, and the rest is various fruit trees (lots and lots of peaches and pomegranites) as well as a full animal husbandry section. Their signature wine is a Sauvignon Blanc mixed with a small amount of Semillon (about 5%) which smoothes out the wine and gives it just a taste of sweet. They also do a 100% Sauv Blanc called "Zingy," and make very good Cab Sauv, Cabernet Franc, and a nice Malbec that's quite tasty, but just doesn't have that blackberry jam flavor that Rancho Sisquoc has.
Buttonwood does several really cool events, including a crawfish boil every other year, a blues event in June called "Red, White and Blues," and a "Farm Dinner" every August that has everything, including the meat, fresh harvested right on the farm. It really is an amazing meal.
We had been thinking of dropping Buttonwood. The wine is usually good, although in the last couple years the quality has not been as high as it had been the years before. The other thing that was getting us to drop them was the high turnover in the tasting room, with one manager after another coming in and out, and new people running the place on a seemingly carosel basis. Part of the wine tasting experience is seeing people you know working at the place, hobnobbing with them, and chatting about the wine culture of the area. However, we caught up with one of our favorite people there whom we had not seen for some time, and the wine seemed to have improved in this vintage, so we are still up in the air about keeping Buttonwood or not. I think we'll get the May shipment and see how that goes before making a final decision.
After getting our shipment there we headed down to our final stop for the day, Gainey Winery. Gainey is in Santa Ynez, right in the heart of the Santa Ynez Valley. Gainey is a good winery, with a very good Cab Sauv and Pinot Noir, but what had really gotten us to join up was their really nice leather lounge (not THAT kind of leather!) for members .
As you can see the leather lounge is really nice, with a full table and leather seats for members, and they come and serve you wine. We have come to the conclusion however, that we have too many of these clubs, so since we got home we have dropped Gainey, along with one other we had been members at in Paso, Whalebone Vineyards. We have seven of these winery clubs now, and will be down to a manageable six if we drop Buttonwood. And while seven might seem like a lot, we have some friends in the wine scene that have been up around 15+ wine clubs!
As it was 4:30 by the time we got to Gainey, we just picked up our shipment, bought some of their great infused oils and herbs for cooking (and gifts), and then got on the road home.
The trip home took a couple hours due to Sunday traffic, but there were no huge delays, and we finally got in just before 7PM local time. That gave me enough time to unpack, freshen up and get inworld in time for our Sunday night Ostara Ritual.
And that was our whirlwind tour of the Central Coast, Paso Area and the Santa Ynez Valley, as well as our concert on St. Patrick's Day. I'm glad I had the last week off -- I needed a break after all that driving, wining and eating of good food!
On Sunday we got up, packed and went into Cambria to do some shopping. When we go to Cambria we love checking out Artifacts Gallery, a really cool two part art gallery. Cambria is known for art, and this place is really top notch. Judy had been salivating over these really cool Mova Globes that move purely due to light energy via solar panels and the magnetic field of the earth. She got the Mars Globe:
And as I love Belle from Disney's Beauty and the Beast, I picked up this limited run of her called "The Enchanted Rose:
After walking about a bit more we packed up in the car and headed down south. But we had a lot of stops to makes: wineries in the Santa Ynez area where we had shipments to pick up.
First stop was Rancho Sisquoc Winery in the very southeastern end of the Santa Maria Valley. This area is the oldest viticultural area in California, being set as a grape growing area by the Spanish Crown when California was still Spanish territory in the New World. Rancho Sisquoc is out in the middle of nowhere, but makes amazing wines, and i especially love their Malbec. The signature note of Malbec is blackberry, and that particular note comes through in their Malbec like no other wine I've ever had -- it's almost like drinking a blackberry jam.
The other wine that Rancho is known for is their Sylvaner, a semi-sweet white that has been grown primarily in Germany and Alsace, but very rare in the USA. There is no other winery growing Sylvaner in California except for Rancho, and it's a very nice, light wine that goes well with everything
Rancho Sisquoc's mascot is a gorgeous black and white cat named Jezebel, who is ultra friendly and loves being petted. Unfortunately we didn't see her that day, but we did hear scraping around on the roof and the employees said they were sure she was walking around up there. She had been brought in to act as a mouser for the winery, but as she's so friendly and people have been giving her part of their lunches for years, they have to get a new
cat to mouse the place as she's gotten so big and lazy she won't go after mice anymore!
After a bit of tasting and getting our order, we continued along the wine trail down to Andrew Murray Vinyards. Andrew Murray is a younger guy in the wine scene in the Santa Ynez Valley, and had a working relationship with the Firestone family that makes today beer. The family owned the Firestone Vinyards, and Curtis Vineyards which is right next to Firestone on the Foxen Canyon Trail.
As the Firestone Family was putting far more of their time and effort into beer than wine, they sold the Firestone Winery to the Foley Family (which I mentioned in Part II of my travelogue) in 2007. The family kept Curtis but as they had developed a very good working relationship with Murray, they leased him the Curtis Vinyards site on a very low cost, long term lease. Murray then revamped the tasting room into a very modern spot, with a very nice members only lounge.
Andrew Murray makes mostly blends of wine, but one of our favorites is the Mourvedre, He also does a really, really good Syrah, and we picked up a couple bottles of the really dry Rose wine they're doing there. A very nice experience.
Lunch was picked up at Panino's, in Los Olivos, about ten minutes south of Andrew Murray. They make fantastic sandwiches, so we picked up a couple to go. Los Olivos is where part of the wine comedy Sideways was filmed, incluing the famous scene about Merlot. We got our sandwiches and headed to stop three, Lincourt Winery.
Lincourt is also one of the Foley Family wineries, and we joined their wine club years ago to capitalize on the fact we get to taste for free at all the Foley Family wineries and get a club discount. Lincourt makes mostly reds, but they do have two very nice Chardonnays they do on the premesis. Their real good wines though are Pinot Noirs and a Cabernet Sauvignon that is now sadly defunct for a few years. They pulled up all the Cab Sauv vines after the last harvest in 2013 and are now only planting new ones, so there will be no Cab for a couple more years there. Lincourt has a really cute, rustic tasting room contined in a yellow house, as you can see below, along with a great outdoor patio with tables for lunch or events, and a windmill that is their symbol.
We were very good and didn't pick up anything extra, just our wine shipment, and then headed down to our fourth spot of the day, Buttonwood Winery.
Buttonwood is actually a large farm on a 106 acre property that founder Betty Williams started in the area in the 1960s. They now have 39 acres given over to grape production, and the rest is various fruit trees (lots and lots of peaches and pomegranites) as well as a full animal husbandry section. Their signature wine is a Sauvignon Blanc mixed with a small amount of Semillon (about 5%) which smoothes out the wine and gives it just a taste of sweet. They also do a 100% Sauv Blanc called "Zingy," and make very good Cab Sauv, Cabernet Franc, and a nice Malbec that's quite tasty, but just doesn't have that blackberry jam flavor that Rancho Sisquoc has.
Buttonwood does several really cool events, including a crawfish boil every other year, a blues event in June called "Red, White and Blues," and a "Farm Dinner" every August that has everything, including the meat, fresh harvested right on the farm. It really is an amazing meal.
We had been thinking of dropping Buttonwood. The wine is usually good, although in the last couple years the quality has not been as high as it had been the years before. The other thing that was getting us to drop them was the high turnover in the tasting room, with one manager after another coming in and out, and new people running the place on a seemingly carosel basis. Part of the wine tasting experience is seeing people you know working at the place, hobnobbing with them, and chatting about the wine culture of the area. However, we caught up with one of our favorite people there whom we had not seen for some time, and the wine seemed to have improved in this vintage, so we are still up in the air about keeping Buttonwood or not. I think we'll get the May shipment and see how that goes before making a final decision.
After getting our shipment there we headed down to our final stop for the day, Gainey Winery. Gainey is in Santa Ynez, right in the heart of the Santa Ynez Valley. Gainey is a good winery, with a very good Cab Sauv and Pinot Noir, but what had really gotten us to join up was their really nice leather lounge (not THAT kind of leather!) for members .
As you can see the leather lounge is really nice, with a full table and leather seats for members, and they come and serve you wine. We have come to the conclusion however, that we have too many of these clubs, so since we got home we have dropped Gainey, along with one other we had been members at in Paso, Whalebone Vineyards. We have seven of these winery clubs now, and will be down to a manageable six if we drop Buttonwood. And while seven might seem like a lot, we have some friends in the wine scene that have been up around 15+ wine clubs!
As it was 4:30 by the time we got to Gainey, we just picked up our shipment, bought some of their great infused oils and herbs for cooking (and gifts), and then got on the road home.
The trip home took a couple hours due to Sunday traffic, but there were no huge delays, and we finally got in just before 7PM local time. That gave me enough time to unpack, freshen up and get inworld in time for our Sunday night Ostara Ritual.
And that was our whirlwind tour of the Central Coast, Paso Area and the Santa Ynez Valley, as well as our concert on St. Patrick's Day. I'm glad I had the last week off -- I needed a break after all that driving, wining and eating of good food!