Which are…where exactly?
Well, the Santa Lucia Highlands comprise a small section of the Monterey Wine Country, which is:
4 ½ hours north of LA, 2 hours north of San Francisco, and 50 minutes south of Monterey and Carmel, west of the 101 between the towns of Soledad and Chualar.
So, that should answer all your questions — except maybe one:
Monterey has a wine country?In a word, yes. If you still don’t believe me, check out this tasting map.
Now, please know that your confusion is warranted. When we decided to go wine tasting in the MWC as part of journey up to Big Sur, I looked up area wines on review sites; asked my local wine guru; I even grilled an elegant guy I see out wine tasting a lot, who knows far more about the subject than most mortals. No one had much to say beyond recommending the whites at Mer Soleil…which doesn’t have a tasting room open to the public.
We ended up choosing the Santa Lucia Highlands for its relative proximity to Big Sur. Inadvertently, we chose well.
Driving up with our faithful corgi, Toby, from L.A. just two weeks ago, we turned off the 101 (just after King City and then Greenfield) onto the Arroyo Seco Road/G17 in Soledad. Arroyo Seco runs alongside the mid-size Santa Lucia Mountains, through patchwork fields of grape vines, kale and red leaf lettuce.
Paraiso Vineyards is first, left on Paraiso Springs Road and atop a small hill, looking out over a vast field of produce. We’d recommend Paraiso for the cute homewares and fancy lotions for sale, the shaded deck out front (good for leaving your dog in car-free safety), and a chance to touch the genuine cork tree by the parking lot. However, the wines run the gamut from dull to cloying to overly acidic; especially disappointing was the clunky Souzao Port, because generally, I love me some port.
Second is Hahn Estates/Smith & Hook, up a much larger hill, affording a gorgeous view from an enormous deck of the winery’s rolling rows of vines, the irrigation-green Salinas Valley, and the mountains beyond. All the roses on said deck have amazing fragrances, and we must have tucked our snoots into every single one. (Again, there’s shade for canines by the parking lot.)
Almost everything inside Hahn’s tasting room has a rooster on it, so Adam, in his favorite rooster t-shirt, was greeted with a big cheer. We didn’t feel exactly the same way about their wines, until we got to the 2005 Viognier. Bright and rounded with fruit, it smelled like a flower and tasted like a smile; that’s worth $20 in our collective book. The chardonnays, on the other hand, were heavily oaky (not our favorite), and the reds, especially the pinot noir, thin and acidic with dry or chalky finishes. They will try to tempt you with their rose, saying it tastes like strawberries — we urge you to politely decline.
Happily, the wine tasting looks way up from here. A left out of Hahn’s driveway, along a country road overhung with willowy pepper trees, and a few minutes up Foothill Road, you’ll see a curiously isolated, decrepit Victorian house on your right; just past it is the driveway (and super-cheesy sign with a painting of lions at rest) for the truly lovely San Saba Vineyards.
San Saba has put tremendous amounts of time on the landscape design around their modern mission-style tasting room, with a Mediterranean color palette, soft grasses waving in the breeze and a fountain spilling into a long lily pond. It’s perfectly quiet here, with only an occasional crunch of gravel or grass-rustle to break the reverie.
Indoors, where big picture windows bring the whole valley inside (and Toby was allowed to come with us), they offer very few wines and make most of them beautifully. We fell in love with their spicy 2006 Pinot Noir and their citrusy 2007 Sauvignon Blanc, but were also impressed with their unoaked chardonnay. We weren’t too surprised to later find their wines on Big Sur and Carmel restaurant wine lists.
The tasting room guy at San Saba, a former cut-and-paste graphic artist who knew he found more pleasure in wine than computers, pointed us two even better wineries less than ten minutes ahead on River Road: Pessagno and Marilyn Remark.
Pessagno Winery is the most elegantly appointed of the bunch, with the most expensive wines. After wending our way down their long driveway bursting with grape vines, we ate our lunch in their shady picnic area alongside the vines and mountains, and they were kind enough to let Toby join us.
Inside the finely-hewn, wood-paneled tasting room, sunlight dappling through stained glass grapes and leaves, we met a guy showing off antique maps of the Santa Lucia Highlands. Turns out he’d been sent down from Carmel by his wife, struggling in the midst of our sudden national credit card crisis to make it home, cashless, from a business trip in Berlin; she vowed that if he’d have several Pessagno bottles waiting for her, she’d return safely.
Just shows you that no matter what their financial circumstances, dedicated winos still won’t skimp on good hooch.
Pessagno excels at chardonnay and pinot noir, the latter of which is offered in five different styles. We chose the delicate Spring Grove Pinot Noir, but could happily come home with Lucia Highlands or the more robust Four Boys, too; we probably should have, since it turns out their wines aren’t all that easy to find. Their 10-Year Port is phenomenal, rich and round without being overly sweet, but at $50 (and after map guy’s tale of his wife’s still-in-progress credit odyssey) we were feeling a bit…shy.
Marilyn Remark was the last winery of the day, and thank goodness…because we easily could have lost our heads here. Stuck out on its own by a dusty field towards the end of River Road, this is a bare-bones place, little more than a couple of tables set beside ceiling-high barrel racks. Run by dog lovers, Toby was allowed to come in and romp a little; the tang of oak barrels and ripening fruit was a real treat.
For all the lack of decor and ceremony, though, their wines are a marvel: specializing in Rhone varietals, the wines here are elegant, rich and dry enough to pair with food without being either overly acidic or dull.
Revel in the 2007 Rousanne, a French white varietal that is fruity and just a bit dry, with an aroma like peach skin. Dive into the grenaches — the 2006 Wild Horse Road was our favorite for its full fruit and spice — and take home the Late Harvest Viognier dessert wine, which despite its deep color manages to be complex rather than cloying.
Just past here, River Road meets the 68 West (the Monterey-Salinas Highway) and cuts south to the Laureles Grade. Turn right onto Carmel Valley Road (the G16) and either take a left at the last light before Highway 1 to head towards Big Sur, or go straight down to the 1 and turn right for Carmel and Monterey.
