Vintage Digs

My husband, Sean, and I, both amateur wine enthusiasts, were wondering when we were finally going to get to Napa and Sonoma for a vineyard tour when it occurred to us that some of the California wines we’d been enjoying lately were closer to home: from the Santa Ynez Valley northwest of Santa Barbara. Instead of flying to Northern California for a wine country weekend, we could drive up the coast in a couple of hours.

So we booked a weekend at Fess Parker’s Wine Country Inn in Los Olivos, a half-hour northwest of Santa Barbara, just far enough off U.S. 101 to keep the traffic roar at bay. More than 30 wineries are accessible from here along the two-lane roads that stretch through the interlocking Santa Ynez and Santa Maria valleys.

Fess Parker has been making wine and running hotels a lot longer than he spent taming the frontier as the movies’ Davy Crockett in the late ‘50s and TV’s Daniel Boone in the early ‘60s. The nostalgia his name evokes for people of a certain age has paved the way for a hotel in Santa Barbara, his own boutique wine label and now the second hotel in Los Olivos. The new place is beautiful but no bargain: Rooms at Fess Parker’s Wine Country Inn start at $230 a night on weekends, $180 Sunday through Thursday.

We left Pasadena about 3 p.m. on a Friday and wished we’d left sooner as we crept westward on U.S. 101 in escaping-L.A. weekend traffic. It took us 3 1/2 hours to drive the 118 miles to Los Olivos. After you get past Camarillo, though, it’s a lovely ocean-view drive to Santa Barbara and then up the coast and inland to Los Olivos.

This hamlet in a knot of rural towns (Ballard, Los Olivos, Santa Ynez and Solvang) tucked beside the San Rafael Mountains is about 2 1/2 blocks of art galleries, curio shops and real estate offices. The one small, corner gas station has closed, and true commercialization is still at bay. Near the end of the second block sits the big Victorian wood-frame structure that was Los Olivos Grand Hotel before Parker bought it in 1998 and renamed it.

The main building of the 21-room inn has a broad front porch, part of which is used by its restaurant, the Vintage Room. The lobby has a smallish front desk and lushly upholstered furniture in front of a fireplace, with a mauve and peach color scheme. Our room was in the “West Wing” across the street from the main building, on the first floor and with a window overlooking the pool and Jacuzzi. The room had a king-size bed, blond wood and Laura Ashley-style floral print upholstery with pastel linens and wallpaper, a tiled gas fireplace and bathroom with separate tub and shower--pleasant, spacious and ornate. But $230 a night in a two-block town?

Once we settled in, I went next door to Los Olivos Cafe to buy a local bottle for the room (a Beckman Sauvignon Blanc, delicious at $14). The help was so friendly and the energy in the place so lively that I made dinner reservations there for Saturday night.

That night we ate in the hotel’s Vintage Room. We didn’t really need to have reserved ahead; only four or five tables were occupied. The restaurant is dark-paneled, with gleaming white tablecloths and a hunt club motif. We ordered a bottle of Fess Parker 1997 Santa Barbara County Syrah ($32), the first of our weekend-long exploration of local Rho^ne-style wines that have given a boost to Santa Barbara County’s emerging stature as a wine region. This one was excellent. My husband ordered chilled tomato soup with goat cheese, and a veal chop with herbed risotto. My dinner was a fixed-price menu: rib-eye steak, mushroom soup with shrimp, Caesar salad, dessert. The sommelier and our waiter were friendly and down-to-earth. There’s no $230-a-night attitude at the Fess.

But it was a big meal, and one doesn’t exactly walk off a hefty dinner in Los Olivos: The streets were deserted after about 9 p.m. and dark as well (no street lights). It was a lovely night, though: cool and starry and fragrant.

We’d hung our room service breakfast order on the door before retiring and expected the knock on the door to wake us. When it hadn’t come by 9:30 a.m., I called: Our order had been overlooked. There were abject apologies all around; it arrived instantly and was on the house. But hotel coffee is hotel coffee, and that’s when I discovered the dearth of alternate coffee sources available to the caffeine-driven tourist. I went in search of newspapers and more coffee and found decent takeout at a sandwich shop called Panini.

We figured 10:30 a.m. was a little early to start tasting wine, so we drove to Santa Ynez, whose small downtown has a Western motif, to indulge my husband’s private goal of seeing all 21 California missions. Mission Santa Ines, completed in 1804, is actually in Solvang, the Disney-like Danish town with windmills and gaslights, known for its summer theater festival.

We went back for lunch at Panini, with its menu of 30 creatively assembled sandwiches (the standard chicken, roast beef and turkey accompanied by things like sun-dried tomatoes, tapenade or pesto) as well as big salads. Then we wandered through Los Olivos before our afternoon of wine tasting.

We began our trip at Fess’ own winery on Foxen Canyon Road, known in tourist brochures as the “Foxen Canyon Wine Trail.” (According to its Web site, the winery produces 45,000 cases each year.) It’s located a few miles outside town, where the atmosphere tends toward the tour bus variety. Yet our guided tour of the facilities, in a group of about 15, examining the vineyards, vats and dank barns full of aging barrels, turned out to be greatly informative and a lot of fun. It was led by Parker’s charming grandson Kristopher Parker, who explained everything from how oak barrels are made to why vintners often add raw eggs to wine to clarify it.

We didn’t begin tasting wines till we had driven 20 minutes to Foxen Vineyard, an anti-Fess winery in more ways than one. Foxen, which produces 12,000 cases annually, is a little corrugated metal barn with one room and a few tables out back overlooking another barn. But it was festive nonetheless. The winery charges $2.50 to taste six different bottlings, served from behind a small bar tended by a youthful, enthusiastic couple who gladly answered questions and explained that the satiny $12 Viognier we especially liked was another of the new Rho^ne whites being introduced in Santa Barbara County.

Foxen and Parker had just settled a trademark dispute that arose when Parker used the name “Foxen” in two new vintages, and the woman who served us wore a T-shirt with Fess’ son Eli Parker’s one public statement after the settlement: “The difference of opinion between Foxen and Fess Parker has been resolved. Now both parties intend to get on with the business of making wine.”

Back toward Los Olivos, we stopped at Curtis, the boutique division of the Santa Ynez standby Firestone Vineyard, located in a spiffy modern adobe. The building was more interesting than the wines, served by a pleasant but bored postgrad who offered endorsements of several reds that we assumed were based mainly on professional obligation. Still, we liked one vintage, the 1995 Syrah ($16), and bought a bottle.

After that much wine, you’re ready for a nap, which may be why the wineries don’t serve past 4 or 5 in the afternoon. But we pressed on to Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium, one of the town’s two tasting rooms and, we discovered, not to be missed.

About a mile outside town on Grand Avenue, this place looks a bit like a roadhouse in the middle of a field. But inside is a stunning mahogany bar and a trove of select wine, pretty much everything good made in the county and some counties beyond, served and discussed by proprietor Bob Senn and his able colleague Rina Perri. For a set price ($5), they give you a virtual wine tour right on the spot. We had a blast, bought a few bottles and didn’t want to leave.

Back at the hotel, we collapsed in the Jacuzzi, rousing ourselves in time for dinner at Los Olivos Cafe. By then we were only up for wine by the glass, and sampled from a list that included Chardonnays from the local Mosby, Gainey, Sunstone, Domaine Santa Barbara and, yes, Fess Parker vineyards and the tasty Beckman Sauvignon Blanc, among other whites. Sean ordered risotto with mushrooms, and I had orecchiette with sausage and herbs. We loved the food, the service and the atmosphere.

On our way home the next morning, we stopped for breakfast at the Longhorn Coffee and Bakery in Santa Ynez, a place recommended by the folks at the Wine & Spirits Emporium. The essential 1950s American breakfast was just what we were looking for.

With our Santa Ynez wine in the trunk, we drove back toward Santa Barbara, taking California 154 through the San Marcos Pass. We were home in just over two hours.

Maybe we’ll get to Napa someday. After our weekend in Los Olivos, it’s somehow less pressing.

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Budget for Two

Fess Parker’s Wine Country Inn, two nights: $561.00

Dinner, Vintage Room: 127.37

Lunch, Panini: 15.00

Foxen Vineyard tasting: 6.00

Curtis Winery tasting: 5.00

Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium tasting: 15.00

Dinner, Los Olivos Cafe: 71.59

Breakfast: 10.00

FINAL TAB: $810.96

Fess Parker’s Wine Country Inn & Spa, 2860 Grand Ave., Los Olivos, CA 93441; tel. (800) 446-2455.