February 21, 2015

• Surprise Destination

  After lunch in Santa Ynez, my friend and I often visit Solvang.  But on a warm Valentine's Day in the middle of a three-day weekend, we chose to avoid the crowds that can descend on that little Danish town.  Instead, we drove north just a little way into the wine country of Santa Barbara County.  California is known for its wineries in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys, north of San Francisco, but more often we hear of Southern California wineries.  Fess Parker and Firestone are just two of the more commonly known wineries of the region, and we visited both -- they are just around the corner from each other.  To get there, one drives up Foxen Canyon Road, through what used to be cattle ranches

  

  

  Even the old oak trees are showing signs of the drought, although the grass was beautifully green!

  

  Fess Parker Winery appears before you like a huge mansion -- behind a beautiful front, a tasting room and sales room awaits.

  

  It is surrounded by vineyard -- the vines are dormant at this time of year, although we did see some tiny signs of life to come.  The rows between vines looked rather messy -- we concluded, though, that the grasses may be some type of grain (smaller than corn, but something that must add nutrients to the soil.

  

  

  Moving on to the Firestone winery, we climbed one of the neighboring hills, and had an overlooking view of one of their vineyards.  Firestone owns the land for their vineyards, but they lease the fields out to a number of growers.  Each field was marked with a different grower's signage.

  

  

  These vineyards looked a little less messy, because they had somehow weeded underneath the vines, although they left the other growth between rows.

  

  Firestone also has an interesting entry to their tasting room.  There is a large courtyard inside these gates, with a door to the tasting room at the other end.

  

  

  And large vats of wine in the back.

  

  These hills behind the winery were once covered with cattle.  The cattle ranchers have mostly sold their livestock in recent years because of the drought and the excessive cost of raising the animals.  They joke that you used to talk about how many head of cattle you could support on an acre of land -- now it's how many acres it takes to raise one animal!  As green as it is, the grass on those hills is very short, and wouldn't feed any animals for very long.

  

  On the way home, we did see two or three small 'herds' of cattle grazing on the hills.

  

  

  

  This was a delightful drive, hardly out of the way of our usual route through Solvang, but with some very different scenery.

  • 11:07 am
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