lgsjr – Page 3 – Power Tasting – The Wine Tasting Experience

Editorial: Tipping

We have noticed a new phenomenon, a bit concerning, on our last few wine-tasting trips in California, both in Napa Valley and Santa Barbara County. Evidently, the servers expect to be tipped. Sometimes that expectation is subtle; the server may bring up tipping and then say it’s completely at our discretion. In other cases, they have let us know that a little something extra was what most tasters left behind. In one case, shockingly, a tip was added to our check without asking us and without our approval.

We have been visiting wineries and tasting for decades and tipping is new to us, limited so far to California as far as we can tell. We expect that servers are fairly paid and that a tip is unnecessary. Why is this happening now? It seems to be linked to software on tablets used to generate bills that have a button for tips of various percentages.

Some might argue that we would tip a bartender so why not a server in a winery’s tasting room? Well, a bartender pours us a healthy drink, not four little sips. He doesn’t try to sell us a bottle or a case of wine and he doesn’t try to convince us to join the bar’s club. He leaves us alone if we want to enjoy our drink in peace and chats if we initiate the conversation. A bartender’s purpose is service. Servers in tasting rooms are salespeople.

We find the advent of tipping to be just another way wineries try to intimidate their customers. The whole rationale for Power Tasting, as our masthead states, is “to empower the visitor to get the maximum advantage out of each visit, not to be intimidated by wine snobs on either side of the bar”. We understand the need for wineries to charge tasting fees; labor, real estate, electricity and taxes have to be paid somehow. But tipping on top of that is an insult to the people who try and buy their wines.

So our advice is that when presented with one of those tablets or even a check on paper, tap the button that says, “No tip”. We would very much like to hear readers’ opinions on this matter. Please leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Wine Tasting in Santa Barbara

There’s something wonderful about tasting wine in sight of the vineyards where the grapes were grown. But it can also be a lot of fun to visit tasting rooms in a city or town, near the countryside. No city that we have ever visited has more opportunities for urban wine tasting than Santa Barbara. The official count is 25 tasting rooms, primarily in three districts.

Power Tasting has reviewed several wineries’ tasting rooms in Santa Barbara in the past. The fact is that what we wrote previously has in some instances become inaccurate. There are new wineries represented, existing ones have disappeared and others have relocated, creating new wine tasting experiences.

The courtyard of El Paseo, with the Grassini Family Vineyards tasting room under the flags. There are four other tasting rooms scattered around the courtyard.

To the best of our knowledge, there are no vineyards within the city limits of Santa Barbara. But there are many of them in Santa Barbara County, with a good cross-section represented in town. Moreover, there are other winemaking regions within the southern end of California’s Central Coast, including Santa Ynez and Santa Maria Counties, available for tasting in Santa Barbara. (There are a lot of saints in California.) Wines from all those regions can be tasted in the city’s tasting rooms.

We used to associate Santa Barbara with Burgundy-style wines, i.e., Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. While this is still true, the broad Southern California region has many microclimates and terroirs that support Bordeaux and Rhône-style grapes as well. This makes a wine tasting visit to Santa Barbara a more varied experience than in the past.

There are three districts within the city where the tasting rooms are concentrated and each presents its own personality. Uptown, where the better stores line State Street, there are ten of them. The Sanford Winery has moved out and now offers tastings at their vineyards. It has been replaced by a husband-and-wife team of Barbieri and Kempe, each with their own tasting lists in the former Sanford facility, located in a classy shopping mall. There are five tasting rooms in a passage called El Paseo, the best-known of which is Au Bon Climat, where you can get your Pinot Noir/Chardonnay kicks. Finally, Kunin Wines, which used to be in the Funk Zone is now on the outskirts of the uptown tasting area.

Easy tasting at Paradise Springs Winery, in the Funk Zone.

In the so-called Funk Zone, the ten tasting rooms are not as classy (with some notable exceptions, like Margerum, which is reviewed in this issue). That is not to say that the wines available to taste are inferior; we were quite impressed with some of them. If you do go there, try to do so between Monday and Thursday, if your intent is some serious wine tasting. On the other hand, if you want to party hard, the weekend is for you.

Finally, on Santa Barbara’s east side, an area of light industry, there are five tasting rooms. They’re rather spread out, so going by car from one to the other is called for. To our surprise, there was some quite creditable wine being pressed and aged there, for instance at Jaffurs Wine Cellars. Wine tasting in this sector is a different experience than we have ever had elsewhere. Wine is wine; you just need to be prepared for the factory atmosphere you’ll find there. We weren’t, but will be the next time.

Too Many Tasting Rooms?

As reported elsewhere in this issue, there are 25 wine tasting rooms in Santa Barbara. If you live there or nearby, you can take it easy on a weekend afternoon, stop in one or two of them, have lunch, visit the sights and head home. But for those of us for whom a visit to Santa Barbara is either a vacation or the extension of some other trip, we don’t have the luxury of trying lots of wineries over an extended period of time. Whatever wineries we’re going to stop at, we’re going to have to visit over just a few days.

The bar of the tasting room at Happy Canyon Vineyard.

So many wineries, so little time.

Here are a few tips for optimizing your time, in Santa Barbara or any other in-town tasting destination.

Start with a winery you know. At the very least, you’ll be assured of finding at least one spot where the wines are familiar to you and, we assume, that you like. For example, we began our most recent excursion at Au Bon Climat, where we have been before and whose wines we often buy. And then the big question: We asked our server where else she would recommend in the area. Her tastes might not be the same as ours (they weren’t) but at least we weren’t picking places at random.
Leave some time for serendipity. Now for the contrary advice. If you are in a region where all or most of the wines are unknown to you, pick one and try it out. So, for instance, we were at that point in the day when we’d ask ourselves, “One more or call it a day?” Opting for the first alternative, we passed Longoria on State, which has more of a vibe of a night club than a tasting room. We enjoyed it greatly and will publish a review in a future issue.
Too many is too much. Just because there are ten tasting rooms within three blocks of each other doesn’t mean you have to try them all. In fact, if you did try ten in a day you’d be a menace to your own health and to those around you. For goodness sake, don’t get behind the wheel of a car. Or jaywalk, for that matter. Even if you’re walking from place to place, set a limit on how many tasting rooms you’ll enter and the stick to your intentions.
Enjoy the ambience as well as the wine. Whether you’re relaxing in a well-appointed room, such as at Happy Canyon Vineyard, soaking up the sun on a terrace or partying in the Funk Zone, you don’t have to bolt as much wine as you can as fast as you’re able. The whole premise of Power Tasting is that the experience of wine tasting can be as important as the wines themselves.
Take advantage of the rest of what the city or town has to offer. Yes, you’re there for wine tasting, but have a nice lunch and see the sights. And don’t soak up so much alcohol during the day that you haven’t got the room for a good bottle of a local wine with your dinner, if you’re staying over.

Margerum Wines

Power Tasting reported on wine tasting in Santa Barbara several years ago; this edition is an update of sorts. At that time, we visited the Margerum tasting room, then at the El Paseo complex. The wines were enjoyable but the room was on a dark alley and it was dark and uninviting inside as well. Power Tasting’s policy is that we don’t print bad reviews; we believe that silence is the best way to deal with wineries that we couldn’t recommend. So we never said anything about Margerum at that time.

The entrance and one of the patios at Margerum Wines.

Margerum (https://www.margerumwines.com) has moved, somewhat surprisingly, to the Funk Zone. But their tasting room in Santa Barbara is anything but funky. (They also have a tasting room in Los Olivos that we haven’t visited.) From the elegant, soaring entrance to the broad, capacious room inside, the message is: “Margerum makes serious wine and should be taken seriously”. [Is the Funk Zone evolving? Time will tell.]

The interior of the tasting room at Margerum in Santa Barbara.

The overall ambiance is that of Spanish-accented lounge at a fancy resort. There is a wide bar, terraces in front and on the side, and a separate section above for groups and parties. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it a restaurant at resort, because Margerum also has a rather extensive menu. Many wineries will offer a cheese and charcuterie plate, as does Margerum, but this one also has a lengthy list of hors d’oeuvres, sandwiches, salads and pizzas, all prepared on the premises.

All of this would mean nothing if the wines were subpar. While Power Tasting doesn’t review wines as such, we can say that there were several that we enjoyed quite a bit. While Margerum does offer Pinot Noirs and several Sauvignon Blancs, their specialty is wines made from Rhône-style grapes. Our favorites were the Pinot Noir from the Sanford-Benedict vineyard, their Reserve Syrah and particularly their Mourvèdre. The Margerum Rosé is also quite Rhône-like.

Doug Margerum, the winery’s founder, is a Central Coast wine pioneer and continues to advocate for and consult to other vineyards in the area. He has started a second label, Barden, using his middle name for these wines. The intent, according to their web site is “an exploration of cold climate grapes grown in and around the Santa Rita Hills AVA”. We didn’t enjoy them as much as the Margerum-labeled wines. We visited the new tasting room on a weekday and so can’t speak to the weekend when the Funk Zone fills with partiers. We were told by our sever that weekends get quite crowded. We don’t understand why the decision was made to relocate to an area better known for high times than fine wines. We prefer to taste wine in an environment that to some degree replicates the atmosphere of a dinner party in our home: a happy buzz of conversation but not the clang of a wild night of drinking. We can only advise that wine lovers visit Margerum and do so on the days of the week that best fit their temperaments.

Santa Barbara

For wine lovers, Santa Barbara is paradise. So many tasting rooms in such a concentrated space! We address the wine tasting aspect of the city elsewhere in this edition, but even if you are not planning to go wine tasting there – or even if you are – the city of Santa Barbara has a great deal to offer the visitor besides wine.

A Santa Barbara street scene. The tower in the background is a movie theater!

For one thing, it is a particularly beautiful city. Much of the architecture harkens back to Santa Barbara’s colonial past, as a part of Mexico. Scrubbed white walls and tiled roofs are evident throughout the city. In another direction, there are also many beautiful Victorian buildings. Power Tasting doesn’t recommend hotels, but our favorite one, the Upham, is a jewel, erected in 1871, still maintaining its original form and is worth a look.

Even, perhaps especially, when you get off the main commercial streets and into the nearby residential areas, your eyes are still delighted. The homes themselves may or may not have architectural interest, but the gardens in front of them are wonderful to see. The Santa Barbarans love their gardens and fill the fronts of their houses with palms, cacti, succulents and a wide variety of flowering plants and shrubs. Take a walk around just to enjoy these sights.

For a city with fewer than 90,000 residents, Santa Barbara is a remarkably cultured city. On State Street, the main drag, there are several grand old movie palaces from a bygone era, still showing the latest films. Moreover, there are several legitimate theaters providing live performances. The most notable cultural magnets are its museums. There’s a history museum, one for natural history and the gem is the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. It doesn’t have a huge collection – you can see it all in less than a day – but what there is is fine. The highlight, to our eyes, is the museum’s collection of Impressionists.

The Old Mission Santa Barbara.

Two other historical cultural attractions stand out. The Presidio is today more of a district than a single attraction. It consists of many of the buildings that the Spanish erected to govern and protect the city in colonial times. (Not coincidentally, the military was there to conquer the Chumash people, who just happened to be living there at the time.) The buildings are well-maintained and many are open for public viewing. Happily, the Presidio is only a few blocks from the tasting rooms.

While the soldiers were occupying Chumash land, Franciscan monks were opening a mission to convert them. What started as a modest farmstead grew over time into a cloister and a church. The Old Mission Santa Barbara is open today for occasional masses and every day for self-directed tours. It includes the gardens, the church, a museum and the cemetery. The latter, originally intended for burial of the monks, has over the years outsiders become the resting place for other, some not even Catholic.

Add to all the above the beaches, resorts, fine dining and oh, yes, wine and you can see that Santa Barbara is an excellent place to visit. One note about the weather. December through March are months with particularly fine weather, warm for those of us facing real winter. But starting late April and onward through June, the weather turns cool and overcast. The locals say, “May grey, June gloom”. Bring a sweater if you go in those months.

Brussels

Brussels, the capital of Belgium, is a handsome city with many interesting things to do there. But to be honest, it’s not a wine city. Oh, for sure, there are excellent wine lists at some restaurants. But there aren’t many Belgian wineries scattered around the country, so if you’re going to do that much driving, maybe you want to travel for around three hours and go to Champagne in France. Or, maybe vice versa, you could tag Brussels on to a Champagne visit.

The Grand-Place or Grote Markt. Photo courtesy of MakeMyTrip.

The best place to start a trip in Brussels is the Grand-Place, which is also known as the Grote Markt. [The Belgians have a great language divide. The Walloons speak French; the Flemish speak their own language, which is close to Dutch. You’ll see signs everywhere in both languages.] The Grand-Place has a lot of history, going back to the 11^th century. In 1695, Louis XIV’s troops destroyed it, so the good burghers of Brussels vowed to reconstruct it even better than it was. They did it in about five years and so it remains today.

The Big Market (for that’s what it means in Flemish) is surrounded by opulent guild halls, the Hôtel de Ville (Town Hall) and lots of places to eat and drink. The Belgian make great beer, and they serve it by the liter. There are few things more pleasant on a warm summer afternoon, than enjoying a beer amongst the architecture, watching some Belgians and even more tourists going about their lives. A word of warning: The Belgians like some of their beers with fruit flavors (Kriek is lemon; Frambozen is raspberry; and Cerise is cherry.) Most Americans find these fruity beers to be awful, but some of us do like them on a hot day. Think of them as Kool-Aid with a kick.)

A few blocks away is the city’s symbol, the Mannekin Pis. It’s a small statue of a little boy, well, pissing. You ought to see it but you’ll find it a bit disappointing if you were expecting a Belgian version of the Statue of Liberty. Some enterprising Bruxellois erected another statue, of a little girl, the Manneka Pis. (You figure it out.) It’s in a 19^th century covered shopping arcade, several of which are near the Grand-Place. They’re worth seeing just for the architecture and the window shopping.

The Ilôt Sacré. Photo courtesy of The Brussels Times.

Also just off the Grand-Place is l’Ilôt Sacré, or Sacred Island. It is neither an island nor sacred, but it is packed with seafood restaurants, with remarkable displays of shellfish and the finned fish. The restaurateurs take special pleasure in displaying a monkfish, arguably the sea’s ugliest creature, with a grapefruit in its mouth. Ugh! But the seafood is fresh and well prepared, so try a meal there. With wine.

Other sights worth taking in, also in the center of town, are the Grand and Petit Sablons, a neighborhood full of boutiques and excellent restaurants. There’s a fence surrounding the Petit Sablon, and each post is topped with a statue of a tradesman. There are 48 of them and it’s fun figuring out how many you can identify.

There are two well-known art museums, one for older (ancien) art and another for the modern. The old art includes the world’s best collection of Breughels and the modern one has the same for Magritte. Finally, this is where the world-famous singer, Jacques Brel, was from. Of course there’s a square named for him and if you are or were a fan of Jacques Brel, just to be there makes you feel close to him.

Caveau de Chassagne

Burgundy is one of Wine Country’s greatest and best known sectors. And the best Burgundy wines come from the Côte d’Or. On the southern tip of this vinicultural (and cultural) wonderland are the paired villages of Chassagne-Montrachet and Puligny-Montrachet. Puligny is more famous, probably because of its white wines, which some connoisseurs believe are the world’s finest. We at Power Tasting are merely wine lovers and make no pretense of connoisseurship, so we offer no opinion.

Photo courtesy of the Caveau de Chassagne.

Chassagne, on the other side of the road, has both excellent whites and reds. You can visit some châteaux, but there aren’t that many (and not the greatest ones) that are visitor friendly. So if you want to taste the wines of the two AOCs, we recommend the Caveau de Chassagne (http://caveaudechassagne.com/). In some ways, it’s like a cooperative, in that you can sample wines from a variety of local producers. But it’s more of a regional showcase, with tastings and sales of wine.

To confuse things, the tasting room is also known as the Caveau Municipal, which is emblazoned on the exterior of a somewhat plain, sandy-covered building. That was the name of the place when it opened in 1986 and they haven’t bothered changing the sign. The interior is rather dark, perhaps because the walls are bedecked with wine bottles. There are a few tables and a display case with the wines you can sample. There are servers, whom they call guides, who are of varying degrees of friendliness to those who don’t speak French, and are quite knowledgeable about the local wines. All that said, it’s worth going.

Some of the Grand Crus available. Photo courtesy of the Caveau de Chassagne.

Although the tasting room is located in Chassagne, Puligny’s are served as well. What makes it distinctive is the range of quality of the wines they serve. A few words about Burgundian wine naming rules is called for here. If the label says only Burgundy, then the grapes can come from anywhere in the province. If it has a village name, such as Chassagne-Montrachet, on the label then it’s from some of that village’s designated vineyards. If it says Burgundy Villages as well as a village name, then it’s from its better vineyards. Premier Cru is even better (and somewhat affordable) and Grand Cru is the top, in both quality and price. And all these levels are available to sip and compare at the Caveau de Chassagne.

Almost all the wine in Burgundy comes from two grapes, Chardonnay for the whites and Pinot Noir for the reds. The reasons have much to do with history as well as terroir, but certainly the local vignerons have perfected the elevation of these grapes. (Yes, there is also Passetoutgrains, which aren’t worth drinking, and Bourgogne Aligoté, which is used in making kir.) Since all of the wines you are going to taste at the Caveau de Chassagne are from the same two appellations and the same two grapes, comparison tasting really can show you how different micro-terroirs, winemakers and quality levels determine what goes into your glass.

Oh, about Montrachet. For one thing, it can be pronounced MAWN-rashay or MONT-rashay. The so-called Mount Rachet is a not very large hill between the two villages. We suppose a mountain is in the eye of the viewer.

Solo Tasting

Tasting wine all by yourself isn’t that much fun. There’s no one to exult with when you discover an unknown gem. Or sneer at a loser. Or just keep you company. And wine tasting alone at home leads to all kinds of problems. Still, there are times when you’re traveling alone and you’re in a place where vineyards are nearby. In some cases, you may be in a place where you are already familiar with the wines, so passing up a tasting trip may be easy to accept. But if you are in a distant, previously unvisited location you may feel that you simply must take advantage of the occasion. So if you may be considering a solo wine tasting adventure, here are some things to consider.

Photo courtesy of Waiheke Island Tours

Try not to go alone. On a business trip, there may be a client who would go with you. Or a fellow conventioneer. Or a relative you’ve been meaning to call anyway. If you are organizing a meeting, you might add on a wine tasting day, for team-building purposes. Before you leave home, give some thought to who you might meet. Only when you’ve exhausted all the other possibilities should you think of the logistics of tasting by yourself.
Take a tour. We don’t often recommend wine tasting tours. In general, they go to the wineries that are convenient, that allow large groups or are highly commercial. Rarely will you encounter the top vineyards in the area you’re visiting. But they know where they’re going and they do the driving. If you have no particular knowledge of the region and its wines, everything you taste will be new to you anyway. Tour companies rarely advertise where they stop, but if they do feature small groups (not a 50-passenger bus) and knowledgeable guides, they’re more likely to provide better quality.
Take a taxi. You can ask a driver how much he would charge for an extended ride. You probably want to have a map and choose a few wineries in advance, so the driver can know where you want to go. In general, ask for a half-day price. Even if you plan on being out for a day, it’s best to plan for a shorter trip and ask for more time than the reverse. Either way, it can be expensive. But getting behind the wheel yourself in an area unknown to you, with alcohol to be added, may not be any bargain. You really don’t want to deal with foreign police or worse, be involved in an accident.
Limit your consumption. It’s best not to drink too much, no matter who’s driving. Don’t embarrass yourself in front of a cabbie or a tour guide. And if you decide to drive, prudence is a necessity. So sip sparingly; don’t gulp. Use the pour buckets. Only ask to try wines you are more likely to enjoy rather than everything on the list.
Talk to the people you encounter. It’s always more fun to share an experience, even if you’re sharing it with strangers. Engage with the person serving you. In most places, the servers speak at least some English, as is likely the case with the other passengers on the bus. And if you want to get to where you want to go, make certain you can talk with the taxi driver.

An Unexpected Tasting

This little wine tasting adventure occurred many years ago, but still seems like a fresh memory. We were travelling with some other people in Tuscany and had found an 18^th century palace that was available to rent. There were only three of us, taking two rooms and we had the palazzo to ourselves. It came with some lovely gardens and meals outdoors under a canopy.

There came a day on the trip when everyone had had enough of taking in the sights. A lazy afternoon in the garden, with the sound of buzzing bees under the shade trees sounded just the perfect. So after lunch, two of us indulged in a siesta. But the other soon grew antsy and wanted to do something. A little wine tasting at a vineyard we had passed the day before sounded very inviting.

San Gimignano in the distance, with vineyards all around it. Photo courtesy of Artsy Traveler.

We had driven to nearby San Gimignano, the towered village between Florence and Siena. We had passed a sign for a Bolla vineyard and made a mental note to return. [This all happened long enough ago that San Gimignano was still a worthwhile tourist destination. It hadn’t been discovered yet. Today it is a medieval village that is overrun with tourists arriving by the busload and is better passed by than visited.]

So the fellow who wasn’t interested in a nap took the car keys and set out to see if he could find that sign again. He did, but on arrival saw that the place was not a winery but rather for a family owned vineyard that the well-known Bolla corporation had hired to make a specific wine. He drove in and found endless fields of grapes and in the middle of them all, a farmhouse. There was no one to be seen in the vineyards or outside the house, so he wandered about a while, noticing that the vines were bearing fruit, all of which was white grapes.

Wanting a taste of the wine that he knew must be made there, he figured his only chance was to knock on the farmhouse door. It was opened by a woman who seemed rather confused as to why a stranger had appeared at her doorstep. As she spoke no English and our friend little to no Italian, an explanation was not readily forthcoming. But he had learned the work degustazione, roughly translatable as “tasting”. Still seeming puzzled the woman, using a few Italian words and more hand signs, asked, “You want some wine?” The fellow said, “Si, si”, so the woman led him into the kitchen. There he found a few vineyard workers sitting at a table just finishing up lunch, looking at him rather quizzically.

She opened her refrigerator and took out an opened bottle of the Bolla wine made from their grapes, from a previous vintage. Realizing he had intruded, the visitor drank up and figured he had to buy a bottle. She reopened the fridge, took out an unopened bottle and handed it to him. He took 10,000 lire (this was before the Euro) from his wallet, gave it to the woman and beat a hasty, somewhat embarrassed retreat.

Imagine how you would feel if some total stranger came to your door and haltingly requested a glass of wine. You too might give it to him, just because you were so shocked that anyone would be so gauche and impertinent to even ask for it.

Sebastopol

One of the most attractive wine tasting features of Sonoma County is that different sections of it specialize in certain grapes. For instance, Alexander Valley is known for Cabernet Sauvignon, Dry Creek for Zinfandel and Russian River for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. As you drive further west in the Russian River area, you encounter subsections, such as the wineries on River Road, the heart of Russian River AVA, and Chalk Hill, on the other side of Route 101. Perhaps the most remote section is Green Valley, quite rustic, with quite a few wineries to visit. Among the best known are Dutton-Goldfield, Hartford Court, Kosta Brown, Merry Edwards and Iron Horse.

Downtown Sebastopol. Photo courtesy of Visit California.

The “seat” of Green Valley is the small town of Sebastopol (population around 8,000). No one is quite sure how the town got to be named after a Ukrainian city in the Crimea. There used to be several California towns of that name. One became Yountville; this Sebastopol was originally named Pinegrove.

Founded when prospectors came to Northern California for the Gold Rush of ’49, Sebastopol soon became the market town for apple and plum orchard keepers. The region is still known for one apple in particular, the Gravenstein, which is becoming rarer and rarer, even in California’s stores. Beginning in the 1970’s, vineyards began to replace orchards, and today that transformation is nearly complete.

The town of Sebastopol was transformed as well. Apple farming doesn’t generate the same kind of revenue as does winemaking, so Sebastopol was until fairly recently a dusty, slow-moving village. And apples don’t attract tourists like wine does, so soon tourists arrived in Green Valley for tastings. (They were more a trickle than a flood; still today Sebastopol is not as heavily visited as Sonoma town or Healdsburg.) Visitors to Wine Country everywhere want to live and eat well, so along with tasting rooms came restaurants, inns, art galleries and just a little bit of traffic along Sebastopol’s Main Street.

Today, as we see it, Sebastopol is a strange mixture of sleepy Healdsburg, circa 1995, and St. Helena today. All three towns are able to maintain the feel of a rural village, but with all the amenities of a town that has been discovered. Healdsburg was transformed by the wine trade and is now a destination itself. St. Helena has become rather ritzy. If the demand for Green Vally Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays expands the way that it has done in the rest of the Russian River area, Sebastopol may become more of a mecca. But it hasn’t happened yet.

Photo courtesy of The Barlow.

One of the signs that Sebastopol is seeking more visitors is The Barlow. It’s a twelve-acre market, on the site of the Barlow family’s apple sauce factory, similar in style and function to the Oxbow Market in Napa town. Kosta Brown has a tasting room there, as do brewers of both beer and cider (apples do survive in the region), plus restaurants, boutiques and specialty food shops. For our part, we prefer the less touristy ambiance of the restaurants and shops on Main Street and the side streets nearby. We recommend that you come and visit soon, before the 21st century catches up to Sebastopol.