Carmel’s Country Cousin

I’m often asked what a travel writer does to get away. This stumps me because I find it hard to go anywhere without writing a story, which tends to turn vacations into work.

In November, though, I found my weekend escape in the Carmel Valley. It’s a finger of land that runs deep into the Santa Lucia Mountains from the coast, about 325 miles north of L.A., but is visited by a fraction of the crowd in touristy Carmel. Flanked by rounded chaparral-covered foothills, it’s as pretty a place for a jaunt as you could want.

But what made the weekend was the fact that I took along a travel writer friend of mine from New York, Matt DeBord. I drove my Miata, the perfect curve-clinging car for the trip, and let Matt take charge of the map. He decided what to do and where to go, and came up with all the obligatory travel-writer bons mots.

At a dapper 32, he’s fallen hard for California, developed an interest in wine and taken up golf. So in the Carmel Valley, which is rapidly becoming one of the most vaunted wine-producing regions in the state, we toured small wineries surrounded by trellised cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc grapes. And on a foggy Sunday morning, before heading home, we stopped to investigate Pebble Beach, where you need to make reservations to play 18 months in advance. I don’t understand golf but will never forget Matt’s face when he first saw the fabled links.

To reach Carmel Valley Village (on the valley’s east side) on a Friday afternoon, we took U.S. 101. But we started late, about 1 p.m., because I somehow failed to comprehend that it’s at least a six-hour drive from L.A.

Some people approach Carmel Valley from the west, via Monterey and Carmel. But Matt and I decided to take the narrow, zigzagging county route G16 (also known as Carmel Valley Road), which runs from the 101 west to Carmel Valley Village, about seven hours of driving.

Darkness fell, and I started getting anxious around Paso Robles. Matt spoke soothingly and made me stop for a cup of tea. We got a little lost and overshot the turnoff for G16 at Greenfield, but when we finally found a road that seemed to be going in the right direction, Matt told me not to worry because he could navigate by the full moon. Glowing like a gold coin, the road reminded me of the times my father drove through the night on family vacations, quoting lines from “The Highwayman,” a poem by Alfred Noyes:

“The road was a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor/And the highwayman came riding--riding--riding . . . up to the old inn door.”

We reached the door of our inn, Los Laureles, about a half-mile west of Carmel Valley Village, at 8 p.m. It’s a modest, white frame complex once owned by society hostess Muriel Vanderbilt Phelps, with a restaurant, swimming pool, gardens and 30 rooms and suites.

The valley has a few inns and guest ranches, some extremely ritzy and expensive, like Stonepine Estate Resort. But our plan was to economize on rooms and splurge on wine and food. That’s why we chose Los Laureles, where standard doubles are $110 (including continental breakfast). Accommodations in this category are in the courtyard section, formerly the stables, with three banks of wood-paneled, motel-style rooms decorated in paisley and plaids--comfortable but a little too close to busy Carmel Valley Road for perfect quiet.

Matt said he liked the place because it was at once gussied up and down at the heels. But he couldn’t get over the fact that the old Zenith TV had no remote control, meaning he had to get out of bed to change channels.

We didn’t take time to unpack because we had a reservation for dinner at Marinus, a restaurant at luxurious Bernardus Lodge down the road. Ben Pons, owner of near-by Bernardus Winery, opened the lodge and restaurant last summer.

Priced at $245 to $650, pretty, ranchlike Monterey Territorial-style rooms at the lodge, surrounding a croquet court and swimming pool, were out of the question for us. But we indulged without guilt or restraint at dinner, feasting on the cuisine of Marinus chef Cal Stamenov, who has worked at some of California’s most acclaimed restaurants, including Domaine Chandon in Napa Valley and Citrus in L.A.

We started with drinks at the wood-lined bar and progressed to the dignified dining room, where the napery is white linen, the silver French and the wineglasses Riedel.

Matt studied the wine list before selecting a Heitz 1994 Cabernet, which the sommelier said was the best the winery has produced in the last 25 years. It went down smoothly with appetizers, a big hunk of sauteed foie gras for Matt and a tricolored beet salad for me.

The wine started tasting like nectar of the gods by the time our entrees arrived. I had delicious roast duck, and Matt had Colorado lamb chops so good that he threatened to chew the bones. With a cheese plate for dessert and a tip, the bill came to $194.

Saturday dawned clear and warm. Part of the beauty of the valley is that it enjoys better weather than the foggy coast. So I went for a run down a country lane lined by towering eucalyptus trees and grazing horses to a covered bridge over the Carmel River.

Then we took down the top of the Miata and headed for the village to buy a picnic lunch at a market and stop at the Bernardus tasting room. There, Matt taught me how to taste wine--by spitting it out, not swallowing.

By the time we moved on to Galante Vineyards, a gorgeous spot on Cachagua Road east of the village, Matt was swallowing. He said the 1997 Blackjack Pasture, made from estate-grown cabernet sauvignon grapes, was too good to waste (but too expensive to buy at $40 a bottle).

At Joullian Vineyards, farther down the road, we walked out into the fields, took in the view of the lush Cachagua Valley and sampled grapes on the verge of fall harvest.

Because I was driving, I still wasn’t swallowing. But the day got away from us nonetheless. We tried to drive up the steep, unpaved road that leads to Tassajara, a Zen monastery and retreat center in the Santa Lucias, but turned back for lack of four-wheel drive.

I made Matt hike with me in 4,461-acre Garland Ranch Regional Park, about halfway between Carmel Valley Village and the coast, and investigate the Santa Lucia Preserve, three miles east of Carmel. Homes are being built on the site, once the historic Rancho San Carlos visited by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1879, but most of its 20,000 acres will remain undeveloped. It’s private land, but the public can join Santa Lucia Conservancy hikes through the area.

Over dinner at Sole Mio, a cozy trattoria in Carmel Valley Village (where two pasta entrees, wine and tip came to $75), we decided to take California Highway 1 through Big Sur on the way home the next day--after another quick sightseeing stop at Pebble Beach.

It was a lot of driving. And, obviously, I did write about the trip. But I wouldn’t call any of it work.

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Budget for Two

Los Laureles, 2 nights: $245.10

Dinner, Marinus at Bernardus Lodge: 194.38

Picnic lunch: 8.00

Dinner, Sole Mio: 74.20

Gas: 42.50

FINAL TAB: $564.18

Los Laureles, 313 W. Carmel Valley Road, P.O. Box 2310, Carmel Valley, CA 93924; telephone (831) 659-2233, fax (831) 659-0481, Internet https://www.loslaureles.com. Marinus at Bernardus Lodge, 415 Carmel Valley Road, P.O. Box 80, Carmel Valley, CA 93924; tel. (888) 648-9463 or (831) 659-3131, fax (831) 659-3529, Internet https://www.bernardus.com/bl/bl2/index.html. Carmel Valley Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 288, Carmel Valley, CA 93924; tel. (888) 659-4228 or (831) 659- 4000, Internet https://www.carmelvalley.com/cvcoc.