The Santa Barbara Urban Wine Trail – Visiting all 28 Tasting Rooms!

I am a self proclaimed wine lover who has tasted at wineries in Southern Oregon, Northern California (Napa, Sonoma, Livermore and Monterey), as well as abroad (Argentina, France, Italy and Portugal). But I have never been wine tasting in Santa Barbara, where I went to college and now currently reside once again. Thus, I have decided to better acquaint myself with the wines of my current hometown via a trip along the Santa Barbara Urban Wine Trail….all of it!

NOTE: There are updates to the Wine Trail. Go to the new page HERE, for updates and to follow along with my visits and tasting notes.

Below was written back in October 2018. New urban wine trail page is HERE.

Santa Barbara is well known for its high quality wineries, with world famous Pinot Noir and Chardonnay dominating the offerings. To make the exploring of this burgeoning scene easier and hopefully more fun, local winemakers have banded together to create the Santa Barbara Urban Wine Trail. The “trail” is a group of 28 (ish) member wineries that have set up tasting rooms spread around downtown Santa Barbara.

While there is not actually a set trail you follow to taste at all the wineries, and not that you could visit all in one outing anyway, there is a wonderful website that lists all the local tasting rooms and provides little tidbits of info on each winery. While checking out this website to see where I should go taste one afternoon I stumbled upon the Urban Wine Trail’s membership card!

For a fee of $162 ($150 plus tax of $12) you are allowed to visit each membership tasting room and receive one free tasting. Given that most of the tastings are $15-$25 and this deal works out to just under $6 per tasting (if you visit them all), it seemed like a heck of a deal. I decided I would get the card and visit every single tasting room on the wine trail!

I plan to write up a little post of each winery and my experience at their tasting room as I work my way through the list. Hopefully this will be a useful guide to others who are in Santa Barbara and want to know where to taste wine and which tasting rooms in Santa Barbara have the best deals and have the best wines! I also see this project as a great opportunity for me to learn more about Santa Barbara wine culture and history. I am looking forward to tasting the best wines that Santa Barbara has to offer and meeting the lovely people that make up this lively industry. I always meet the nicest folks while wine tasting!

Below is the list of all the current member wineries with links to each write up as I visit them.

1. Santa Barbara Winery – Visited on March 2, 2018
2. Jaffurs Wine Cellars
3. Whitcraft Winery- Visited on October 5, 2018
4. Oreana Winery
5. Carr Winery – Visited on October 5, 2018
6. Kunin Wines
7. Margerum Wine Company – Visited on October 28, 2018
8. Silver – Visited on October 14, 2018
9. Summerland Winery
10. Municipal Winemakers
11. Au Bon Climat – Visited on October 4, 2018
12. Deep Sea – Visited on October 6, 2018
13. Grassini Family Vineyards – Visited on October 14, 2018
14. Pali Wine Company – Visited on February 10, 2019
15. Sanguis
16. Area 5.1 Winery – Visited on October 5, 2018
17. The Valley Project
18. Fox Wine Co. -Visited on February 13, 2018
19. Riverbench Vineyard
20. Sanford Winery – Visited on October 13, 2018
21. Happy Canyon Vineyard – Visited on December 15, 2018
22. Lafond Winery
23. Jamie Slone Wines – Visited on November 17, 2018
24. Cebada Vineyard – Visited on February 24, 2019
25. DV8 Cellars – Visited on November 2, 2018
26. Babcock
27. CA’ Del Grevino – Visited on January 5, 2019
28. Paradise Springs Winery
29. Melville Winery

There are 6 new additions, see my updated post here.

Cheers!

Alan Evans