Santa Barbara County Wine Event Weekend

If you didn't have a reason to get out of town already. Here are a few more that might motivate you to head up to the Santa Ynez Valley this weekend. You might even want to call in sick on Friday and head up for an early start on the fun.



Its the annual Santa Barbara County Vintner's Festival. This event features wines from over 100 wineries in the area plus great food and music. Event is 1-4pm on Sat April 19th 2008 at River Park in Lompoc.

To compliment the festival, Pick up a Vintner's Visa at Wine Country in Los Olivos. ( $35 w/o festival ticket, $25 with your ticket). This gives you access to an amazing array of events running from Friday to Monday.

The list of events each day is just overwhelming. The standout on Friday looks to be a winemaker dinner with Flying Goat Cellars, Norm Yost's winery, at the La Purisima Mission. Additionally, Foley Estates will be open till 8pm and have light hord'oeuvres and wine tasting. Ken Brown Wines will also have an open house and library tasting. ( 11am- 4pm)

Saturday the big event is the festival of course but there is lots of other cool stuff to check out as well.

• Babcock will be having an open house.
• Palmina will be having a Friulian Symposium & Brunch prior to the festival.
• Longoria will be having a Production Facility Open House so stop by there in the Lompoc Wine Ghetto prior to heading over to the festival.

So now you've gotten out of the festival and you're wondering what you can do now. There are tons of great winemaker dinners to choose from. Foxen's dinner at Alisal Ranch, Palmina's dinner at the Santa Ynez Inn, Buttonwood Farm's Taste the Futures dinner in the Vineyard featuring New West Catering, Core Dinner at Wine Country, and the Longoria dinner at the Ballard Inn. Check out this link for more information. Any of these would be amazing. You can't go wrong.

You still haven't had enough food, fun, wine. Well then there's Sunday!

• One of my favorites is the ABC open house. For $15 bucks you get to taste wines from Au Bon Climat, Qupe, and Verdad. This is one of the two times a year that Jim Clendenen with Bob and Louisa Lindquist open the doors to their facility tucked away at Bien Nacido Vineyards. (11am-3pm)
• Alma Rosa will also be having an open house with wine, food, and the music of Francisco Gonzalez a founder of the well known "Los Lobos". Admission is $15 dollars. ( 11am-5pm)
• Jeff Wilkes of J Wilkes wines will be pouring over at Wine Country some of his new wines, library wines, and barrel samples. ( 11am-5pm)
• Hitching Post wines will have an open house featuring their current releases and selected library wines, complete with Hitching Post appetizers! $15 per person (11am-3pm)
• Kathy Josepth, of Fiddlehead Cellars, will be featuring a special library tasting so you can check out the aging potential of her wines. She will also have a great selection of cheeses and bbq.

This is just a taste of what's coming your way this weekend. To read more go to the check out the SB Vintner's Association Site. Hope to see you there!