Drink Up!

This past Labor Day weekend, my dearest friend, Yen, and cousin, Uyen, made a visit to stay with us for a few days.  We had a weekend filled with lots of wine, food and more food!  Every activity was planned around a meal or an alcoholic beverage of course.  Sadly we weren't hungry even once.

Since moving down to Santa Barbara, I have been dying to go wine tasting but really wanted to wait to do it with some out of town guests.  So this was the perfect weekend to take my over-aged guests (I do mean that in the most endearing way!) to the San Ynez Valley, central coast wine country.  Our first stop was Bridlewood Winery, one of the larger estates in the area.  The Spanish influence landscape gave the winery a rustic charm.

After sipping slowly on the classic tasting flight, we decided that we yet again needed a snack.  Luckily, we were given precise instructions to head to a nearby market, Los Olivos Grocery.  Although the market was small, it had all the essentials to pair with wine - cured meats, pate, crackers and even free picnic plasticware!

After picking up our goodies, we made our way Firestone Winery only to find that the tasting room was closing down for the day.  However, Uyen was successful in purchasing a bottle of white but unsuccessful in her attempt to run into Andrew Firestone. We ended up shortly back at Los Olivos Grocery.  The cute grocery store had a little picnic area out front.  We opened up a bottle of wine that we had just purchased and made ourselves at home.

I was soaking in the wonderful afternoon and swinging in the hammock chair listening to Yen and Uyen complain about how much we ate and drank.  However, it was too much fun to stop and did not want any food or wine to go to waste!

Great company and great conversation made it a wonderful afternoon in wine country.