Santa Barbara: The Urban Wine Trail

For Christmas last year, I gave Brian a sea cave kayaking adventure in the Channel Islands, 

off the coast of Santa Barbara.  

We decided to make a whole weekend out of it, 

and planned a Saturday in Santa Barbara and set the tour for Sunday.  

Luckily, Sunset had just run a whole feature on Santa Barbara 

and the so-called "Funk Zone."

(Do you read Sunset Magazine?  I'm a big fan.)

The name was so awful that I just had to read the article,

and they had me at "Urban Wine Trail."

So I threw my bike in the car, packed my funky pants, 

and we set off to find this magic "zone"

where streets were supposedly lined in wineries and hipsters.

And I'm happy to say,

Sunset totally delivered.

Some deets.

The Urban Wine Trail starts near East Beach and 

takes you past tasting rooms for lots of California wineries,

especially from the Paso Robles area.

Some of the wineries have live music on weekends,

and there are food trucks.

And it's easily bike-able, or walkable!

*Heaven*

We started our tasting at Whitcraft,

which was a tiny little tasting room with the most delicious red wines

and the man who led our tasting was super knowledgeable and helpful --

he even marked all the places we should go on a wine tasting map for us!

This place had the best wines of our trip.

Our second stop was Carr.

This place was hoppin.

They make their wine on site, so there were barrels in the back,

and they had cheese plates (clutch).

From Carr, we rode our bikes into the heart of the Funk Zone

(just sounds wrong)

and parked them on Anacapa Street,

where there's a string of tasting rooms all in a row.

We hit up Kunin first, which had a great zin,
and conveniently,
the Burger Bus was parked right outside.
YUM.

 Our last stop was Municipal Winemakers,
which was the most hipster stop of the bunch,
and of course, the one I loved the most.
It felt like home to this San Franciscan.
And I wanted to hug everyone who worked there
(maybe from all the wine?).

Also, this table.

We left in a happy daze, wishing the day could last longer.

 I kind of want to do this every weekend.