{"id":807,"date":"2017-11-29T21:47:19","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T21:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=807"},"modified":"2017-11-29T21:50:14","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T21:50:14","slug":"the-funk-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=807","title":{"rendered":"The Funk Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wine tasting comes where you find it.\u00a0 For the most part, the most enjoyable tastings are at wineries alongside the vineyards where the grapes were grown.\u00a0 But urban tasting<\/a> has its charms as well, as we have written about before.\u00a0 One of the great growing regions in Southern California is the Santa Rita Hills in Santa Barbara County, but it\u2019s not close to anything much, unless you just happen to be passing through Lompoc.\u00a0 For that reason, many of the best vineyards in the county have opened tasting rooms in the city of Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n

There are two totally different wine tasting experiences to be had in Santa Barbara.\u00a0 Uptown has some very elegant tasting rooms, many in chic shopping malls off the major streets.\u00a0 We\u2019ll save a write up on Uptown for another issue.\u00a0 The other locale is called the Funk Zone and not without reason. Get ready to PAR-TEE!<\/p>\n

Now that may not be to your taste in wine tasting.\u00a0 If so, visit the Funk Zone as early as possible in the morning before the crowds arrive.\u00a0 If the weather is good \u2013 and it\u2019s almost always good in Santa Barbara \u2013 you can be sure that the crowds will arrive. \u00a0It would be one thing if we had to report that the wines weren\u2019t worth tasting and the servers knew nothing about what they were pouring.\u00a0 However, there are quite a few interesting wines to be tasted, often from small producers who can\u2019t afford a fancy tasting room.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t 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.\u00a0 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\u2026<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of Discover Santa Barbara<\/em><\/p>\n

Our favorite discovery in the Funk Zone was Kunin Wines.\u00a0 The tasting room has the atmosphere of a breezy shore house and indeed it\u2019s a short walking distance from the Pacific.\u00a0 The majority of their wines are Rh\u00f4ne varietals: Viogner and Syrah leading the pack.\u00a0 They have a few blends that they compare with Ch\u00e2teauneuf du Pape. Okay, they\u2019re nothing like Ch\u00e2teauneufs but they are really nice California Rh\u00f4nes which isn\u2019t a bad thing at all.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Nearby is the Santa Barbara Wine Collective, a huge barnstyle building, which features a number of producers, most focused on Pinot Noirs.\u00a0 You can sample all the wines from one wine maker or do comparative flights from several.\u00a0 Our favorites were Babcock and good ol\u2019 Fess Parker of Davy Crockett, Dan\u2019l Boone and Pinot Noir fame.\u00a0 We were pleasantly surprised at the knowledge of our server who seemed too young to know that much and explain it that well.\u00a0 A nice touch is The Lark restaurant\u2019s cafe in the same space, where you can get good food to go along with your tasting.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of the Santa Barbara Wine Collective<\/em><\/p>\n

Another chance to experiment is at the Valley Project, which offers a tour, in your glass, \u00a0of some unfamiliar grapes and terroirs of Santa Barbara County.\u00a0 The building itself is an attractive, open space with a map of the region on an enormous chalk board behind the bar.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re young or young in spirit, the Funk Zone is for you.\u00a0 If you\u2019re not, you can still have a very good time there if you plan your day right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wine tasting comes where you find it.\u00a0 For the most part, the most enjoyable tastings are at wineries alongside the vineyards where the grapes were grown.\u00a0 But urban tasting has its charms as well, as we have written about before.\u00a0 One of the great growing regions in Southern California is the Santa Rita Hills in … Continue reading The Funk Zone<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=807"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":811,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions\/811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}