Day Tripping: Santa Barbara's Urban Wine Trail

Wine tasting on a Sunday afternoon is always a fabulous idea and I encourage everyone to make it a habit.

Some friends and I were sitting around after a long night of whiskey and karaoke last Saturday when someone suddenly mentioned a Freebird's burrito. If you've been to Isla Vista (or apparently various locations in Texas) and eaten one of these, you'll know what I mean when I say that we were awestruck and inspired to go to Santa Barbara the next day. Now, you can't just drive up the coast for a burrito alone, so we came up with a complex plan of action involving wine tasting. It turns out there are plenty of tasting rooms from local vinyards right in downtown Santa Barbara. The Urban Wine Trail spells it out, and before you know it you're prancing around on the beach wondering if you'll make it to work on Monday and when you'll be permanently relocating to the 805 area code.

We went to 3 tasting rooms:

1. Kunin Wines and Westerly Vinyards

This combined tasting room was our first stop. They offered a choice between a tasting of four wines from either vinyard for either $8 or $10, and I went with the Kunin. All of the wines we tried were very spicy, and from the Santa Barbara region other than a zinfandel from Paso Robles. I wasn't a huge fan.

2. Municipal Winemakers

Second stop was this fabulous tasting room right next door that had apparently had its grand opening the day before, complete with all sorts of snacks from Whole Foods. If I were born in a wine tasting room, this would be it. Hipster couple pouring wine behind do-it-yourself resin and oak countertops, music from a well chosen iTunes playlist, clever vintage cash register from the dinosaur era, complimentary cheese plate... yes please.



Now on to the wine. $10 for a tasting of 4. The wine here was as unpretentious as wine can be, they used screw tops and labels like "Bright Red" and "Fizz."



All about the wine, not about the luxury. The wine maker, a UCSB grad, (consequently named David) was very passionate about his craft and awesome enough to educate us a bit by sharing pictures of what goes into creating the "Fizz" wine, a sparkling shiraz handmade through an intense process you can read about on the website. I was completely charmed by the handmade-with-love, small-scale friendliness. You charm me, I buy your wine.

3. Santa Barbara Winery

Last stop, but a good stop. This tasting was $5 for 6 wines (thought they poured us many more) and at that point, I was already thinking that whatever you put in my glass was delicious. It didn't hurt that the guy pouring the wine had lovely blue eyes and sexy plaid flannel (that's right, I said sexy plaid flannel). The highlight here was a chardonnay from Santa Barbara, mostly because I'm not into white wine at all and this one was very interesting and refreshing. The SB Winery had the most reasonably priced wines (as well as the tasting itself) of the three and seemed to be the most large scale. Every Sunday, the tasting room features tasting and cheese pairing with a local wine maker, but we arrived too late for that.

Many hours and many glasses of wine later, we required a romantic walk on the beach to sober up before heading back home.



The Santa Barbara Urban Wine Trail is a great way to taste a lot of local wines without trekking to the boonies (most of the vinyards are in Santa Maria and beyond), not to mention proximity to Freebirds and State Street shopping. Yes, yes, yes.