Press | California’s Best-Kept Wine Secret Is Only A Short Drive From L.A.
Excerpt from Bloomberg, by Samantha Brooks.
See full article here.
The Hilt, a winery north of the town of Santa Ynez.
Source: The Hilt.
Just 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles, the Santa Ynez Valley is home to quaint wine-tasting rooms, pastoral rolling hills, and charming ranch towns—some seemingly pulled straight from spaghetti western sets. Yet most people driving north from the City of Angels stop 30 miles short of it, in the posh coastal getaway of Santa Barbara.
Their oversight can be forgiven: Santa Barbara has always eclipsed the greater Santa Ynez area in terms of five-star resorts. And even though Alexander Payne’s film Sideways gave mainstream cred to the valley’s pinot noirs over 15 years ago, Napa and Sonoma remain an obvious lure for high-end oenophiles.
Danish architecture is the unique signature of Solvang, a town in the Santa Ynez valley.
Photographer: John Elk/The Image Bank RF
That’s changing. A handful of upscale resorts and destination restaurants are raising Santa Ynez’s profile enough to match the high standards of its characteristically savory-yet-aromatic pinots and strong, citrusy chardonnays, which have long drawn those in the know.
“Santa Ynez Valley is a hidden gem,” says Samuel Eisenman, vice president of Highway West Vacations, a company that’s opened four hotels in the area since 2013. Its latest, the year-old Winston, has 14 rooms with wood-beamed ceilings, brightly colored walls, velvet-upholstered headboards, and Moroccan chests in the heart of Solvang. “The culinary scene has elevated over the past several years to reach L.A. caliber,” he says.
Except here you can also do things like go horseback riding or soar over the vineyards in a glider, in between mingling with winemakers at local tasting rooms. The region has begun drawing inspectors from Michelin, who recognized multiple Santa Ynez spots in the latest edition of their guide.
Auberge Resorts is also on the verge of opening the Inn at Mattei’s Tavern. It’s housed in a 135-year-old, whitewashed Craftsman building that served as a stagecoach stop during the Gold Rush and a speakeasy during Prohibition. More recently it’s functioned as a wedding backdrop for fancy Californians.
Its 6.5 acres will also include a handful of mostly new, ranch-style buildings—including several cottages and a two-story “guest house,” all designed by Santa Barbara’s DMHA architects and San Francisco’s AvroKo—that offer a combined 67 rooms. Assuming it’s anything like the company’s flagship in Auberge du Soleil, which gave Napa its first fine-dining restaurant and five-star hotel in the 1980s, the Inn stands to transform the Santa Ynez Valley into a gastrotourism mecca.
If Santa Ynez Valley has been quietly simmering for years, its growth has only been catalyzed by Covid-driven road trippers seeking outdoorsy yet sumptuous locales. Here’s a primer of the region’s sweetest towns, coolest boutique hotels, and most ambitious farm-to-table restaurants.
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By Samantha Brooks, Bloomberg.