What a revelation this was visiting this area of California. I now know why >39mm people live in this state. It was beautiful and the wine was as well. Much nicer than the concrete and pavement of LA.
The central cost wine area stretches from Santa Barbara to San Francisco. We flew into LA, rented a car and drove up to San Francisco. Our first order of business after picking up the car at LAX was to get lunch at In-N-Out Burger.
Our first stop was in Santa Barbara, what a beautiful city. We strolled downtown from our B&B and looked at the waterfront. There are lots of restaurant options many with good wine menus. We started our wine touring with a day tour of the hills North West of the city. Day tours allow you to sample till your hearts content. We lucked out on our first stop at the Koehler winery, finding a box with a Styrofoam insert to protect the bottles. They gave this to us for free upon the purchase of one of their lovely Cabernets. The advantage of doing a tour other than the drinking and no driving is the overview of the area as it relates to wine making.
The next day we drove up to Los Olivos, a 40 minute drive NW from Santa Barbara. This was a new experience. The area wineries set-up tasting rooms in town all within stumbling distance of each other. We took it easy on the drinking since we stayed in Santa Barbara, but you could consider staying overnight in Los Olivos and walking over to the tasting shops. You really get to see the wide variety of grapes used in this area by visiting so many tasting rooms. You get cool climate wines like Chardonnay and Pinot Noir closer to the ocean and hot climate wines like Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah further inland. In fact there are some grapes that absolutely need heat like Sangiovese and Grenache grown here; the Stolpman Sangiovese was a revelation, it was gulpable without the high acidity and tannins of the Italian chiantis, try it and buy it.
We then moved up to Paso Robles. There are both large operations (like J Lohr) and small ones. We only spent a couple of days here but you could spend a week since there are over 200 wineries. They grow all kinds of grapes in this region but predominately red including Zinfandel, Bordeaux varieties, Italian varieties and they seem to be very proud of their Rhone blends. Some of the scenery back in the hills is exceptional, we particularly liked Daou perched up on a hill with lavender bushes surrounding the driveway. Clayhouse tasting room is conveniently located downtown, as are some lovely restaurants.
From here we drove up to Monterey via Highway #1, the Pacific Coast Highway. Warning you are driving along the edge of a cliff, so you need to be OK with this. The scenery is breathtaking. A must do if going on this road is to stop into Hearst Castle, especially if you are a fan of Citizen Kane. We stopped South of Monterey near Carmel for a tasting and met a couple of real housewives of Carmel. I think a little wine in the afternoon makes one extra friendly. One of the ladies asked what we were going to do in the area and we said do some tastings and visit Pebble Beach to see it, not play. She said you have to pay to enter the area unless you are visiting a resident, so she gave us her name and we were in the next day. After visiting the golf course gift shop we took a stroll along a beach front board walk. It was very windy with native shrubs growing along the beach. We were in a constant spray from the ocean. It was a real treat to see and experience nature. If that isn’t your thing you can look the other direction and see golfers who have more money than skill playing one of the auxiliary Pebble Beach courses.
Our B&B was maybe half a mile from the waterfront in Monterey. They have a fun touristy area here called Cannery Row with restaurants and shops.
Our last day of wine touring we decided to find the famous Ridge winery. The reason for its notoriety is the solid placing in the original Judgement of Paris (watch the movie Bottle Shock about the white wine battle) and winning the 2006 reenactment. The wine is Monte Bello, a Bordeaux blend, and it is spectacular. The winery is on top of a mountain, I could swear our GPS was going to send us off a cliff. Just when I was about to turn-around we came upon the winery. We ended up getting a Zinfandel, which was not a jam jar of grapes but an elegant expression of this noble Italian/Croatian grape.
We had a day to kill before catching our flight out of SFO and went into San Francisco. We strolled around the touristy pier and went for lunch. I still remember the linguine con vongole as the best I ever had, still haven’t found one in Italy that could top it.
In summary we thoroughly enjoyed the great wine and fantastic scenery of this part of California. I am not going to take anything away from Napa/Sonoma but I think the landscape is nicer along the Central Coast, as well reports from people we bumped into indicated the tasting fees are crazy in Napa. Back in 2014 the tasting fees in the Central Coast were $10 typically, Napa was supposedly $20 and up. Coming from Canada these fees are a shock to the system, fees are typically $5 and are waived with the purchase of a bottle.