The Perfect Weekend: Destination Vine
As you all know, we live in one of the most beautiful and exciting places in the world. San Francisco will always be home and where we love to spend our time discovering new and exciting restaurants, shops and bars. Even though our city has so much to offer we still like to get out of town every now and again and explore the new and exciting things our great state has to offer. Sure, San Francisco has the beaches, the beautiful parks and the unique local boutiques and designers, but we will say that our city is missing something and that is a great winery and wine tour. So what are we to do about it? We had to venture elsewhere for a few days to get our wine fix, specifically to the beautiful Santa Barbara Destination Vine. Our tour guide and Co-founder of Destination Vine, Diane Dreyer, was beyond spectacular.
Destination Vine is located in the Santa Rita Hills and offers the best of the best when it comes to anything wine-related. Female owned and operated Destination Vine offers wine tours and the most incredible world renowned wines and “hidden gems” as stated on their website. We must say that indeed we did discover some amazing hidden gems during our time with Destination Vine. In addition to wine tours, Destination Vine offers horseback riding, biking, hiking, hot air ballooning among many other activities. Since Destination Vine is renowned for their tours we decided to take three tours of three different vineyards to see what each had to offer.
We began our day at 11am with the Peake Ranch Tour. This tour was of the Sanford Winery estate, an estate of over 50 acres dedicated to producing the most amazing wines. We sipped at least half a dozen wines each special to this winery and enjoyed the most amazing complementary cheeses while enjoying the incredible view of the rolling hills and gorgeous weather.
Our second tour was the Tyler Estate Vineyards. Located in the heart of the Santa Rita Hills, this vineyard specializes in creating Burgundian wines. The cool climate, marine soil and the long mild growing season ensures the Tyler Estate wines to be the best in Santa Barbara. We were even lucky enough to enjoy an artisan picnic style lunch with the esteemed winemaker in his very own vineyard home while basking in the amazing vineyard view. Our lunch was just as good, if not better than the wine itself with items such as a Cranberry Goat Cheese Salad, Di Parma Sandwich and Tuna Avo Sandwich, we were truly so spoiled.
Our third and final tour was of the Hilt Estate. Matt Dees, who has three estate vineyards to select grapes and create a portfolio of wines with distinctive styles. This is one of the newest estates and vineyards of the area and is sought out for its intimate tastings as well as their incredible selections of, yes you guessed it, wines. There is so much more to explore at Destination Vine besides the wine tours however wine was our mission and we more than accomplished it. Our next visit will for sure include some more engagement with nature such as a hike through the vineyards or maybe even a hot air balloon ride to really appreciate the amazing views we got a glimpse of at ground level. For now, we will enjoy our regular walks through Golden Gate Park or perhaps a jog across the Golden Gate Bridge. We still have love for you San Francisco, even if we do need to get away every once in a while ;).