Wine tasting comes where you find it. For the most part, the most enjoyable tastings are at wineries alongside the vineyards where the grapes were grown. But urban tasting has its charms as well, as we have written about before. One of the great growing regions in Southern California is the Santa Rita Hills in Santa Barbara County, but it’s not close to anything much, unless you just happen to be passing through Lompoc. For that reason, many of the best vineyards in the county have opened tasting rooms in the city of Santa Barbara.
There are two totally different wine tasting experiences to be had in Santa Barbara. Uptown has some very elegant tasting rooms, many in chic shopping malls off the major streets. We’ll save a write up on Uptown for another issue. The other locale is called the Funk Zone and not without reason. Get ready to PAR-TEE!
Now that may not be to your taste in wine tasting. If so, visit the Funk Zone as early as possible in the morning before the crowds arrive. If the weather is good – and it’s almost always good in Santa Barbara – you can be sure that the crowds will arrive. It would be one thing if we had to report that the wines weren’t worth tasting and the servers knew nothing about what they were pouring. However, there are quite a few interesting wines to be tasted, often from small producers who can’t afford a fancy tasting room.
We don’t pretend to offer a comprehensive tour of the Funk Zone (or anywhere else, for that matter) but we can offer a few suggestions for some interesting tasting there. Of course, being close to the Santa Rita Hills means that there will be a lot of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay to be sipped. And yet…
Photo courtesy of Discover Santa Barbara
Our favorite discovery in the Funk Zone was Kunin Wines. The tasting room has the atmosphere of a breezy shore house and indeed it’s a short walking distance from the Pacific. The majority of their wines are Rhône varietals: Viogner and Syrah leading the pack. They have a few blends that they compare with Châteauneuf du Pape. Okay, they’re nothing like Châteauneufs but they are really nice California Rhônes which isn’t a bad thing at all. We were there early in the day and it was quite sedate; when we stopped by in the afternoon a frat party had broken out.
Nearby is the Santa Barbara Wine Collective, a huge barnstyle building, which features a number of producers, most focused on Pinot Noirs. You can sample all the wines from one wine maker or do comparative flights from several. Our favorites were Babcock and good ol’ Fess Parker of Davy Crockett, Dan’l Boone and Pinot Noir fame. We were pleasantly surprised at the knowledge of our server who seemed too young to know that much and explain it that well. A nice touch is The Lark restaurant’s cafe in the same space, where you can get good food to go along with your tasting.
Photo courtesy of the Santa Barbara Wine Collective
Another chance to experiment is at the Valley Project, which offers a tour, in your glass, of some unfamiliar grapes and terroirs of Santa Barbara County. The building itself is an attractive, open space with a map of the region on an enormous chalk board behind the bar. Not all the wines were to our taste, but it was a good chance to see what else was going on besides Santa Rita Hills Pinots.
If you’re young or young in spirit, the Funk Zone is for you. If you’re not, you can still have a very good time there if you plan your day right.