Wednesday, May 14th
Well, it's almost over; just one more day of fun in the Santa Barbara Wine Country.
First stop today was Fiddlehead Cellars right here in Lompoc:
They're not normally open for tasting on Wednesday but they made an exception for us. John took good care of us:
.. and good wines.
Here's a slogan we can all get behind:
Leah found something she likes:
While we're "doing" Lompoc today, next was Melville Winery. Another beautiful building:
I can't remember much about the wines but I do have these pix:
One of the "must do" things in the area is to go to Solvang to have split-pea soup at "Pea Soup Andersens". This place is world-famous and we had to try it. IMHO, Gael's is better -- but this was pretty darned good.
Only the Barr's were good enough sports to do this:
After lunch we returned to Lompoc to visit what turned out to be the last winery of the trip, Foley Estates.
This is really a lovely tasting room:
They had a cookbook from last night's restaurant:
While in Solvang, we planned to visit a couple of what we thought were wineries, but that turned out to be commercial wine bars. We wanted to taste Blair Fox Cellars wine and found it only in a wine bar called "The Wandering Dog":
There was, indeed, a wandering chocolate Lab in there. The couple behind the counter were nice enough and the wine was OK:
They also had their own label as well:
We were headed for a similar establishment to taste Aubonclimat when I recalled that Sandra at Demetria had said to come back at the end of the tour and let her know if we found any wines better than hers. Fran gave her a call to make sure she was serious - she was - and we headed back to Demetria. This would be so special since Newsom and Beverly hadn't arrived in Santa Barbara in time to go to Demetria on our first visit on Sunday.
The nice thing about the Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Rita Hills is that nothing is very far away. In a half hour we were back at the gate at Demetria.
We met the winemaker and assistant wine-maker (both surfer-dudes) and John and Sandra had wines ready on the patio. With the eight of us, John, Sandra and their three dogs, we had a rolicking good time:
It turns out that Sandra used to watch Fred play Pony League Baseball years ago in South Carolina because her cousin was on Fred's team. She called him and handed the phone to Fred. They hadn't spoken in 40 years!
We were having such a good time! Bill asked if John and Sandra would join us for our closing dinner at Downey's in Santa Barbara and, after the slightest persuasion, they agreed -- but only if they could bring the wine. Well, yeah...
I called the restaurant to see if there'd be a problem expanding our reservation from eight to ten. There was no problem, especially since I told the Liz (the owner) that we'd be bringing the owners of Demetria Estates with us. She was eager to meet them.
We left for Santa Barbara (as you know, about an hour away) and John and Sandra met us there. A grand time was had by all but I think Downey's ranked third (after Epiphany and Bouchon) so far as meals in Santa Barbara go:.
Another hour+ home and to bed. Tomorrow everyone scatters and the HOB Wine Tour 2008 is in the record books.
This picture, taken by Bill, is the best one of the trip; what a lovely area:
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