Category: Places to Visit

If you go wine tasting in Marsala (and you really should if you visit Sicily) less than two hours drive from Palermo, you will likely want to stop for lunch.  You can try to find a restaurant in the town of Marsala, but to be honest the town is rather dull.  The people in the wineries recommended a few places, but it seems they were only open for dinner.  But then the server at Cantine Pellegrino suggested we drive up the road a short way, “only 10 minutes away” to Mamma Caura’s.

Mamma Caura’s restaurant on the beach in Trapani

As is often the case when you get advice from the locals, they don’t have a true sense of distance on roads they know so well.  She then spoke the most dangerous words of advice: “You can’t miss it.”  As long as we hugged the coast and watched for signs for the ferry, we’d be fine.   And in fact, we were.

What she didn’t tell us is that the road itself was worth travelling.  It took us past the salt flats of the next town north, called Trapani, where they take salt from the sea.  (The most desirable salt in France is called fleur de sel and its Italian cousin is sale marino, which comes from Sicily’s western coast.)  Sea water is pumped out of the Mediterranean into shallow, squares  pools, or pans, set up on the shore where the water evaporates and leaves salt with mild flavor, moist texture, and tiny, irregular grain sizes.  The salt is harvested and piled up into small hills that remind us North Americans of snow after a blizzard.

Salt has been made here this way for many centuries, even before the Romans.   The pumps were driven by windmills (evidently a recurring theme in this issue of Power Tasting) and a few are still there, more for show than for practicality.  Motorized pumps do the work these days.

Which brings us back to Mamma Caura’s.  Yes, it was easy to find and it is on the beach near the ferry jetty that takes people to the nature preserve on San Pantaleo island.  The food is simple but enjoyable. Indeed, what’s not to like on a very hot day when you enjoy a fresh and crispy tuna salad with a bottle of white wine (Donnafugata Anthelia, from the winery where we had just visited).  And the view is wonderful!  In front of you are the salt pans, the mounds of salt, and a magnificent windmill.  A few boats round out the vista.

After lunch you can walk out to the windmill, learn more about the history and the process and buy some salt at the shop.  It comes in small or large packages and in a variety of colors.

One word of caution, though.  It can be very hot on the beach.  We were there in mid-September, not the middle of the summer and we broiled, even under Mamma Caura’s outdoor pavilion.  You should still go; just have a nice cold bottle of white wine with your lunch and enjoy.

This article is the latest in Power Tasting’s irregular series on interesting wine bars around the world.  Previous issues have taken readers to locations in Paris, London, Copenhagen and Lisbon.

There is a street in Québec City called rue Cartier that is only five blocks long, but is the commercial heart of a sector that is very much Québecois.  Not the Québec of monumental hotels and 18^th century architecture, but rather a reflection of the way the people of this French-speaking Canadian province live and think of themselves.  For example, there are five boulangeries, where you can buy the best baguettes in North America, and as many pastry shops that dazzle the eye as well as the palate.  There are trendy clothes shops, a French bookstore, two family-owned butchers, two pubs where you can watch all the hockey games and at least a dozen restaurants all spilling out into the street during the warm summer months.

And there is one wine bar, a “bar à vin”, called Petits Creux & Grands Crus (https://www.petitscreux.corsica), which translates roughly as “little snacks and great wines”.  While it is open year round, its indoor space is rather small.  PC&GC comes into its own after the last snows melt and before all the leaves fall, May through October.

Now, Québec City is a very French town as opposed to Montreal, which is more evenly split between francophones and English speakers.  In the not so distant past, no one knew about rue Cartier except the locals.  Québec City has always had plenty of tourists but they generally stayed in Vieux Québec, the Old Town, and were not seen in the residential and commercial areas.  Today, you will hear English, Chinese, Italian and Spanish as you walk along rue Cartier (which doesn’t please Lucie, who is from Québec).  The wait staff at PC&GC are adept at both French and English and we have heard conversations in other languages as well.

With Québec’s French heritage, you might expect this wine bar’s list to be heavy in Bordeaux, Burgundies and Rhônes and indeed there are plenty of those on its rather extensive list.  But Marie-Pierre Colonna, the owner, is Corsican-American.  So the spécialités de la maison are wines from Corsica, that island department of France floating in the Mediterranean.  Its wines reflect its geography, with the sun producing big, flavorful, fruity wines in both red and white.  The Corsican rosé served at PC&GC looks more like a light red than a slightly colored white, as found in Provence.

Many of the grapes in the Corsican wines are barely known this side of the Mediterranean.  There are reds like Neullucciu from the north of Corsica, Sciacarellu from the south and a white grape used there called Biancu Gentile. (Sometimes these grapes are spelled with an “o” instead of a “u” but M. Collona speaks in the Corsican dialect.)

The “little snacks” as advertised in the wine bar’s name aren’t really that small.  You can get boards with meats, cheeses, veggies or seafood but there is nothing much that you would call a nibble. They used to make their own potato chips that were served warm and very crusty but unfortunately they removed them from the menu.   There are also a few main courses, some of which echo the Corsican theme of the bar.

Despite the influx of tourists, rue Cartier is still a focal point for the people of the surrounding neighborhood.  One of the great pleasures of spending some time at Petits Creux & Grands Crus is watching the parade of the local people passing by.  Sure, in one way it’s the same mix of young and old, men and women you’ll see anywhere.  But these are the folks of Québec, with their distinctive history, beautiful language and joie de vivre.  So take a glass or two of wines that you’ve never heard of, much less tasted, and pretend for an hour or so that you’re a part of this wonderful Québecois culture.

 

 

For many years, Long Island was famous for certain agricultural products, specifically ducklings and potatoes.  Then, 45 years ago Alex and Louisa Hargrave thought that the soil and climate of the North Fork of eastern Long Island would provide the right terroir for wine grapes.  Today, there are 38 wineries in the North Fork AVA.  The fact that they exist is a testimonial to the Hargraves’ vision, but from the perspective of a wine tasting enthusiast, it is only recently worth the trip to try the wines.

We have been visiting the North Fork Wine Country for roughly 25 years and for most of that time, we would have had to say that wine tasting in this region amounted to a pleasant day in the country.  It was not an expedition for the purpose of serious wine tasting.  The wineries were ambitious and the wines showed promise but they were, in our opinion, mostly poorly made and overpriced.  Growers were and still are planting too many varietals, most of which are not supported by the terroir.  Based on some recent tastings, we are pleased to say that the quality has improved sufficiently that a visit to the North Fork can be rewarding in terms of the wines themselves, while still offering attractive surroundings and attractions other than wine alone.

  The tasting room at Bedell Cellars

While there are still too many varietals at almost every winery, a consensus seems to have been reached as to what the North Fork does well: Sauvignon Blanc in the whites and Cabernet Franc in the reds.  We guess that there is a market for Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, since they are still being produced, but they do not measure up to the quality we have sampled of the two varietals we mentioned.  It would seem that there has been more investment in wine making technology as well.

We certainly didn’t like everything we tasted, but we could say the same thing about Napa Valley, Bordeaux or Tuscany.  Not that Long Island’s wineries are at the level of those exalted regions, but it is fair to say that tastes differ and that the North Fork has established itself as an area with some well-made wines.  There are also charming villages that take advantage of Long Island’s agricultural and maritime traditions that can round out a visit, beyond wine tasting.

There are still some negatives that should be mentioned.  It is a long trip from Manhattan to the North Fork, at least two hours each way.  We have decided that in the future we will not go there for day trips but will stay over at a hotel or an inn.  That will give us the opportunity to try some of the restaurants that are open only in the evenings or for lunch only on weekends when this sector of Wine Country can be quite crowded.  Many wineries feature live music and picnicking in the summer, placing more emphasis on tourism than on the wines for their own sakes.

Is the North Fork AVA a destination for wine tasting adventurers?  We would say “yes”, especially if they have other reasons to be on the island, outside New York City.  (It takes an hour to leave the city.)  A degree of open-mindedness is still called for but a visit there can provide some rewarding new tastes.

 

Sonoma County has several rather distinct wine growing regions, each of which specializes in certain grapes that flourish in their respective terroirs.  There’s Russian River for Pinot Noir, Alexander Valley for Cabernet Sauvignon and Dry Creek for Zinfandel.  Every place grows Chardonnay.  For wine tasters, one of the problems with the broad spread of Sonoma County is that wherever you go to taste wine, you’re pretty far from a place to buy lunch.

Photo courtesy of The Press Democrat

In the Dry Creek sector, you really have only one choice: the Dry Creek General Store.  This emporium on Dry Creek Road comes complete with a lot of history.  It’s an attraction in itself, beyond the food.  It has been open since 1881, serving gold miners, bootleggers, travelers and locals for decades.  In its day, it has sold all sorts of provisions, as evidenced by an ancient photo on the store’s web site (http://www.drycreekgeneralstore1881.com) proudly stating that hardware and dry goods are for sale.

Today’s Dry Creek General Store is a combination delicatessen and gift shop.  The deli side of the store makes sandwiches from a wide variety of meats and cheeses  on artisanal breads, together with salads.  The other sells  cutesy things that nobody needs but that are pretty little gifts.  But it wasn’t always this way.  In recent memory, the meats were ham and roast beef, the breads commercial white and whole wheat.  The rest of the store wasn’t a gift shop.  They sold nails and pots and towels and, and, and – the stuff of a true rural general store.  Yuppie sandwiches and merchandise make the store more accessible to many travelers, at the expense of authenticity.

And then there’s the bar adjacent to the store.  As of this writing, it’s closed, because some patrons thought it was okay to take their drinks away with them, a violation of local licensing laws.  The owners are fighting to get their permit back and so the bar will surely be open soon.  Then you will be able to see a crazy collection of general store memorabilia hanging from the ceiling and you can down your beer while sitting on a horse saddle.  And you’ll be able to share that beer with a few locals who look like they stepped out of a time warp or from central casting.

Photo courtesy of Dry Creek General Store

If you’re lucky, you’ll arrive on a day when there’s a barbeque going in front of the store.  Depending on the day, you’ll be able to buy brisket or sausages or even crabs.  While there’s no documented evidence of such cookouts in the old days, it feels like a throwback to a communal past that may never have existed, but ought to have.

And that’s the reason to make sure you visit the Dry Creek General Store in your wine tasting travels.  It’s a real part of the past, now adapted to the needs of the present day.  The people of the area don’t need a general store when there’s a Walmart just down the highway.  In our times, there’s money to be made in wine tourism, so the store serves this generation of customers.  Come and feel a part of the past as you munch on a sandwich out on the porch.

The Oxbow Public Market’s (http://oxbowpublicmarket.com/) name comes from the shape of the Napa River.  The course of a river may encounter an obstruction, causing the river to bend in a U-shape around it.  This creates a widening of the river, effectively a lake.  This is called an oxbow, because it resembles the U-shaped yolk placed around the necks of oxen.  Such an oxbow occurs in the Napa River, at the town of Napa and this is where they have erected the Oxbow Public Market.

It is various things for different people: a place to buy food and wine, a tourist attraction and a site for casual and slightly more formal dining.  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person who loves good wine loves good food as well, so the Oxbow Public market has become quite a magnet for those who take a little time away from wineries to venture into town.  As the weekends can be awfully crowded on Route 29 and the Silverado Trail, Napa Valley visitors might find it a good idea to visit Napa instead, making the market quite an attractive stop.

For one thing, the views over the oxbow are quite beautiful.  As you cross the First Street bridge approaching the market, you see the broadening of the river, and the buildings alongside it.  It is a  particularly attractive view at sunset.

The Napa River oxbow.  Photo courtesy of the Iron Pig.

 The interior of the market is a mix of kiosks and booths hosting purveyors of fruits, vegetables, sausages, wines, books, ground coffee, bread and spices.  Local people actually do shop there, but a great number of the people you’ll find in the Oxbow Public Market are tourists.  Of course, the same can be said of New York’s Chelsea Market, Seattle’s Pike Street Market or Victor Hugo Market in Toulouse, France, Barcelona’s La Boqueria, or other urban markets around the world.   For the visitors, ice cream, hamburgers, chocolates, cupcakes and pizza are available.

The interior of the Oxbow Public Market. Photo courtesy of Madison Marquette.

Then again, if you’re a real foodie (and most wine lovers are, so we’ve observed) you like looking at the food available in any city you’re visiting, even if you don’t have a kitchen nearby to cook it in.  It is certainly something we do in our travels.  If nothing else, seeing all the culinary bounty fires up the appetite.  When that occurs, there are restaurants in the market as well.

Of course, there are many restaurants in Napa outside the market, some of them quite good.  The point is, you don’t have to eat at the market but you can.  Much like going wine tasting, it’s as much about the experience as the food itself.  And in this case, the Oxbow Public Market is symbolic of the revival of Napa, which had been left behind as Yountville and St. Helena, up the highway a bit, became meccas for food lovers on a wine tasting vacation.  Those are indeed great destinations, but the town of Napa should be included in your Napa Valley wine trips.  And the Oxbow Public market is fine place to see when you’re in town.

 

Lavender field in Nyons, France . (Proto courtesy of Provenceweb.fr)

 Wine regions around the world all have one thing in common: vineyards, of course.  As you travel in the Wine Country in France, some have more to offer, such as historical villages, unique churches, Roman bridges, mountain views, gourmet food, farmers’ markets, pottery, art, fields of flowers, orchardsand agriculture.   A sector of the southeastern part of France, called the Drôme Provençale, has all of these  things and more; this is where we will take you in this article.

Market day in Nyons, France.  Photo courtesy of francerevisited.com

This part of France is best known for its Rhône wines, lavender fields, but also for its apricot orchards and the famous olives grown in the small village of Nyons, where you can stop at the Cooperative for a taste of their olives and the local wines.  You can drive through beautiful little villages like Sainte Cécile-les-Vignes (where we had a memorable lunch at the small hotel La Farigoule), Cairanne, Rasteau, Gigondas, Vacqueyras, Beaume-de-Venise, Châteauneuf-du-Pape (all Côte-du-Rhône villages).   Then there are Orange and its Roman arena and Suze-la-Rousse with its castle, home of the Université du Vin (Wine University).  Here there are laboratories and tasting rooms that are unique in Europe, offering courses in oenology and management for the wine industry.  All those villages are surrounded by vineyards overlooked by mountains: the Mont Ventoux and the Dentelles de Montmirail.

The Université du Vin.  Photo courtesy of Les Châteaux de la Drôme.

The village of Châteauneuf-du-Pape is the best known Rhône village, thanks to its famous and unique wines.  The village itself is certainly worth visiting.   You can park in the village, have a delicious lunch at an outdoor café and walk to some of the wineries in the village. Other vineyards are just a short drive from the town, where you will find Domaine Beaurenard,  Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe, Château Beaucastel to name just a few of the most famous.

Châteauneuf-du-Pape, France.  Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.com

This is a favorite part of France for Lucie, since she has old friends in Nyons. She knows most of the villages and can drive you around (if you ask her).  Being a member of the Commanderie des Côtes du Rhône (Rhône wine society) as Chevalière (knight), she is quite knowledgeable about Rhône wines and she happens to have some connections in this part of the world, which will bring a few future articles on the subject.

Isn’t the Drôme Provençale inviting?

Power Tasting isn’t really about reporting the news, but we feel we owe it to our readers to give a description of what it’s like to go wine tasting in early 2018, in what we like to call Napa/Noma.  The fires that ravaged many areas of Napa and Sonoma Counties are out now, and if you smell smoke, it’s probably from people’s fireplaces.  If you don’t go searching out the most badly damaged areas such as Atlas Peak in Napa and Fountaingrove in Santa Rosa, you would not particularly know that the conflagrations occurred.

There are, of course, numerous signs that they did.  There are billboards announcing fire-related charities and lawyers to help with cases.  Most poignant for us was what we didn’t see: as we drove up Route 101 in Santa Rosa, the Hilton we used to stay at and the nearby landmark, the Round Barn are no longer there.  Considering the loss of life and those made homeless, these are certainly lesser tragedies, but for frequent visitors such as ourselves, they are stark reminders of what happened there.

The Round Barn, before the fire.  Photo courtesy of the San Jose Mercury News.

At the same time, for those wondering whether to go wine tasting in the affected areas, the answer is definitely “yes”.  For one thing, it’s a chance to aid the local economy that is still feeling the shock.  For another, you get the chance to speak with the people who lived through the disaster and hear their personal stories.  Interestingly, the people we spoke with all knew someone who had experienced significant losses but did not themselves.  With a few lamentable exceptions, almost all the wineries were spared.  Even more remarkable, there was very little damage to the vineyards, although one well-known producer did tell us that they lost a few rows in one of theirs.

The rest told stories of extremely hard work, miraculous escapes and good news for the 2017 release.  Over and over we heard that a vineyard had just been picked the day before the flames came. One did admit that a portion of their crop at one sourced vineyard had been left on the vines because it was impossible for the trucks to get there.  For the most part, we heard that the grapes had been crushed and were in barrels before the fires occurred.

We are wine tasters, not growers or makers.  We are nonetheless concerned as to how the 2017 vintage will turn out in Northern California.  A new term has entered our vocabulary, “smoke taint”, which is different than the pleasant smokiness in certain wines, particularly Northern Rhônes and Pinot Noirs.  It’s a highly unpleasant taste, so we’ve read, akin to licking the bottom of a well-used ashtray.  It will be a few years before we learn whether Napa/Noma wines are affected.

If you go wine tasting there now, you’ll be offered 2014’s and 2015’s, with perhaps a newly released 2016 available.  We can happily report that we tasted a 2017 Sauvignon Blanc at Rochioli in Russian River and the taste was grapefruit, not smoke, and it was delicious.

It will be hard to forget these terrible fires, for years to come.  But the fact is that if your goal is wine tasting, you can visit Napa/Noma without fear.  It looks and feels the same as ever, even if the usual pleasures are mixed with more than a bit of sadness.

In the north of Portugal you’ll find the city of Porto, on the northern shore of the Douro River, where it debouches into the Atlantic.  The city’s name has an interesting history.  On the southern shore there is today a town called Vila Nova de Gaia, but it Roman times it was Gallia.  As the town prospered, the Lusitanians (as the Portuguese were then known) needed more room, so they built a port, or portum in Latin, on the north shore – contemporary Porto.  Today the country takes its name from these twin cities: Portum + Gallia = Portugal.

Porto as seen from Vila Nova de Gaia.  Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe.

And as wine lovers know, it also gave its name to a wine we call Port.  That fact alone makes Porto worth visiting, but it has many other attractions as well.  Among these are the Cathedral, the Eiffel bridge (same architect as Paris’ tower) also known as the Luis I, the Clerigos Tower and the Douro Waterfront.  While there is much excellent dining around the city, a particular favorite is on the waterfront, the wonderfully named La Case da Filha da Mae Preta or The House of Black Mae’s Daughter.  If you go, order the giant prawns in garlic sauce; they’re not on the menu but it’s the best dinner you can have there.

And of course, there’s Port to be tasted.  When you check into a hotel, after you sign the register, they hand you a glass of Port.  Now, that’s civilized!

The wine is pressed upriver and shipped in tanker trucks to the wineries, or lodges as they are known there in Vila Nova de Gaia.  [In the past they came down river on boats called rabelos.  These can still be seen in the river near the south shore, but are no longer in use.]  In Gaia, they are aged in casks, barrels or bottles, depending on the style of wine.  You can taste away at the Instituto do Vinho do Porto, which is the counterpart of the solara or tasting room in Lisbon.

If you are on the Porto side in the evening, you will see the Gaia hillside light up with enormous signs of all the Port houses you ever heard of…and a few you haven’t.  Many of them have tours and tastings, during the day of course.  Perhaps the best tour is at Sandeman’s which is also the easiest to reach.  There is a small bridge (not the high Eifel one) that you can walk across the Douro.  Turn right on the Gaia side and Sandeman is a few hundred feet down the road.  You’ll get a great view of Porto as well.  Your tour will explain the differences among dry, ruby, tawny, colheita, LBV and vintage ports and then you’ll get to taste some of them.

Photo courtesy of Monaloca.

Other lodges are less easy to reach but the consensus position is that the wines are better.  Each has certain attractions.  Ramos Pinto has a museum of their history.  Calem, one of Lucie’s favorite Ports, offers a fado (Portuguese blues) performance along with your tour.  The more famous names, such as Grahams and Taylor Fladgate, focus pretty much only on the wines.  Many require appointments.  Some have restaurants.  It’s a good idea to read up before you go wine tasting there.

Another good idea is to remember that Port  is a fortified wine, meaning that it is enriched with neutral grain brandy.  That makes it quite alcoholic, typically 20% or more.  That’s less than in whiskey but a heck of a lot more than in table wine.  So don’t plan too many tastings in one day.  Enjoy the beauty of your surroundings so you get the most out of Porto and its twin city, Vila Nova de Gaia.

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.

If you’re driving north from Los Angeles to go wine tasting in the Central Coast, you will probably pass through or near to the town of Solvang.  If you’d like to do something different and just a little strange, get off the freeway and visit.  In the early part of the 20^th century, a group of Danish families emigrated to Santa Barbara County’s Santa Ynez Valley and set up farms.  The Danes set up a town called Solvang that reminded them of Denmark, with architecture, churches and food stores evoking their homeland.

Of course, when you have a place that is a bit exotic and quite scenic, tourists will follow.  So while the farming tradition of the area around Solvang is very much alive, the center of town is an attraction, one verging on cutesy.   The buildings are half-timbered and the windmills actually turn.  There’s a replica of Copenhagen’s famous Little Mermaid, and a bust of Hans Christian Andersen and restaurants where you can get smørrebrød, the famous open-faced sandwiches that are a staple of Danish fare.

Photo courtesy of Solvangusa.

We have recently been in Denmark and can assure you that Solvang has no more to do with that country than Las Vegas does with France.  Still, this doesn’t take away the pleasure of pretending you’re in Denmark.  Solvang really is pretty and it really does have its roots in Danish-American history.

Solvang may be an out of the way little town for many California visitors, but not for those who are there for wine tasting.  It is located at the doorstep of the Santa Rita Hills, which is the source for some very fine Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.  Many of the best wineries in the Santa Rita Hills have tasting rooms in the city of Santa Barbara, enough so that travelling to the vineyards for tasting purposes is unnecessary.  But if you like looking at rows of vines while you taste, Solvang can be a good place from which to travel into the Santa Rita Hills.  Moreover, it’s a short drive to Los Olivos and you’re already in the Santa Ynez Valley, so you’re right in the middle of Wine Country when you’re in Solvang.

Photo courtesy of Hendrik Breuer.

You don’t even have to leave Solvang to go wine tasting if you don’t want to.  There are at least a dozen tasting rooms in the town, of varying quality.  (Au Bon Climat used to have a tasting room there but has since moved into Santa Barbara.) We would advise that the reason to taste wine in Solvang is more about the atmosphere than the wine itself.

Wine Country is about wine, to be sure, but there are usually other things of interest, worth a visit.  You wouldn’t go wine tasting in Champagne without going to  Paris or in Tuscany without seeing Florence or Siena.  So it’s pleasant to take some time to visit a town like Solvang if you’re wine-tasting in the southern end of California’s Central Coast.  Okay, it’s not Paris or Florence, but Solvang and the Santa Ynez Valley can offer a pleasant way to spend a day of vacation or a weekend besides wine tasting.