Wining in the Santa Rita Hills...sort of...

Shortly after attending the extremely hot and hard to navigate Santa Barbara County Vintners Festival in Los Olivos, we had the opportunity to sample several of the wines we had missed by showing up for the Santa Rita Hills Winegrowers Alliance event at the Wine House in Los Angeles.

JD and I are big fans of the Santa Rita Hills. Cool climates and sea influences help create lean and elegant wines. SRH is a relatively small appellation of approximately 100 square miles. Intersected by the Santa Ynez River, the cool climate appellation is located between the towns of Buellton and Lompoc in Santa Barbara County, California. The Sta. Rita Hills Winegrowers Alliance includes both vineyards located within the geographical boundaries of the appellation, and those who craft wines from grapes grown there.

Wining with the Santa Barbara Vintners' Association...

Some of my favorite wines in the world come from Santa Barbara County. So you can imagine my delight when I received the notification that the Santa Barbara County Vintners' Association annual celebration of spring, the Vintners' Festival was scheduled for April 21st at a new venue called The Carranza on Zaca Station Road.

We drove up Saturday morning. It was cool and foggy along the coast, but when we emerged from the Gaviota tunnel, we knew we were in for a scorcher. After a hearty breakfast at Mother Hubbard's in Buellton, we headed to The Carranza. It was already almost 90 degrees when we arrived at noon. We were happy to get in early with the media, and immediately discovered there were significant problems with the venue.