We’re delighted to have just discovered the Santa Barbara Urban Wine Trail, where we fell in love with four different wineries…and that’s just the four we tried.
We initially dismissed the concept of in-town tasting rooms as unexciting…possibly because they don’t involve enough driving?
To get to the other Santa Barbara County wineries, we have to travel north for at least a half-hour. To be fair, the routes there are delightful, with twisting, lakeside curves and long, smooth paths through wide-open, green and wheat-gold valleys. We’ve wine-tasted for whole afternoons up there without buying a single bottle, just to soak up the atmosphere.
The only problem is, if you’re staying in Santa Barbara, you have to drive back.
So, armed with a trail map (click on the right-hand square that reads Santa Barbara), we went boldly forth, mere blocks from our downtown hotel.
All wineries are small producers (3500-4000 cases per year) and tastings cost $10 apiece, unless you buy at least one bottle. We highly recommend sharing a tasting for the sake of your wallet, palate, and motor skills.
Carr Winery
414 N. Salispuedes Street
The most unique tasting room we saw, a Quonset hut/wine cave. Carr’s vintner is a grape grower who knows every aspect of his craft, and it shows. While tasting we might buy a bottle or two, but here we snatched up:
- Alchemy Grenache
- Alchemy Syrah
- Pinot noirs (Lindsay’s Vineyard, Three Vineyards, and The Yard)
- Turner Vineyard Pinot Gris
Some of these weren’t featured on the usual tasting menu; we lucked into a visit the day after a big in-house party, with several open bottles that needed drinking. Still, it can’t hurt to ask.
Jaffurs Wine Cellars
819 E. Montecito Street
The bare-bones tasting room here feels like a garage outfitted with a hangar full of oak barrels (pictured here), but the staff are both knowledgeable and helpful. They specialize in Rhone varietals, and we were smitten by their Thompson Vineyard Syrah and their Viognier.
Jaffurs also alerted us to a ‘09 addition to the Urban Wine Trail:
Kunin Wines and Westerly Vineyards
28 Anacapa Street
One of the great highlights of the day, these two wineries share a light, white and airy tasting room in a train-tracks part of town known locally as The Funk Zone. We perched on couches, petted visitors’ dogs, and leaned more towards Kunin’s reds with every moment.
We picked up Kunin’s:
Since dinner was the logical next step, we asked here for a recommendation and were thrilled by:
Wow, it sounds like you guys had an amazing day of wine tasting! My husband and I love wine tasting in Santa Barbara and will definitely check out these places next time we are in town. It can get expensive though, but I suppose everything in Santa Barbara is expensive, including the hotels! I think it is a great idea to stay nearby to your hotel. Last time we were in town we stayed at The Sandman Inn (www.thesandmaninn.com) on State Street and were able to walk to the Santa Barbara Winery, which we both really enjoyed. Plus, the Sandman was a very quaint hotel that was also budget-friendly so we were able to splurge on wine since we saved on our lodgings =)
Kathleen, thanks for the tip about The Sandman Inn! We’ve stayed at a couple of places in Santa Barbara over the years — the romantic Inn of the Spanish Garden, and the dog-friendly Blue Sands Motel, which is right across the street from the beach.