A Sideways Saturday Tasting at Kalyra
Alena knows my love of wine and movies and the wine movie Sideways. So as a super thoughtful Christmas gift she looked up the wineries from the movie and picked one to take me to on a wine tasting date. She chose Kalyra as it had a laid back tiki bar theme. I do love my Hawaiian shirts!
She planned our tasting for the second Saturday in January. We prepped by watching Sideways Friday night. Alena had never seen the movie and I was excited to share it with her. We sat down to watch it with a bottle of 2010 Sanford Pinot Noir, which I picked up in a mystery pack on my visit to their tasting room.
As I was turning it on Alena noticed it was two hours long. She asked me with great concern why the documentary was so long!
She knew it was a wine movie and assumed it was non-fictional. She was very excited to find out she had committed to watching an actual Hollywood movie and not some “boring wine documentary” (I joked next time we can watch SOMM).
We both loved watching the movie together. It is an awesome buddy story with hilarious laughs, great wine references and a bit of a dark side. The only thing better was that amazing Sanford Pinot!
After sleeping off that wonderful bottle, we headed to Santa Ynez and our tasting date late on Saturday morning. Santa Ynez Valley is about 40 minutes directly West of Santa Barbara (which is mind blowing as Santa Barbara sits on the ocean…which is normally to the west in California). It was a beautiful drive up highway 154, driving over the Santa Ynez Mountains, passing by Lake Cachuma and through beautiful fields and vineyards till we reached Santa Ynez and Kalyra Winery.
It was a stormy Saturday afternoon, but was not yet raining when we arrived at Kalyra. The winery’s location provides for amazing views out over the valley and up at the surrounding mountains. Due to the stormy skies, the lighting made for gorgeous contrasts between the green fields, orange vines and grey mountains .
We later enjoyed a fancy, but cold, picnic out on their deserted patio overlooking this fantastic scene.
While the view outside was beautiful, it was quite chilly and we were very excited to check out Kalyra’s tiki themed tasting room and finally drink some wine!
It was pretty slow for a Saturday afternoon, but we figured the impending storm might be keeping people away.
The winery lived up to its reputation; being very laid back and definitely Australian/tiki themed.
We sat down at one of the two wine tasting bars and prepared for my long awaited Christmas gift. We discovered that the winery had just raised the price of tastings to a steep $20 each. This is pretty high given that the wines were priced between $30 to $35. At least you get to keep the nice logo wine glasses that are included in your tasting. Sadly we forgot to grab ours before we left and had to loop back later in the day to retrieve our souvenirs.
We had the choice between their sampler flight and their dessert wine flight. We decided to each get the sampler in order to taste a diverse sample of what Kalyra had to offer.
We started with the 2017 Semillon, which smelled of tropical fruit and yeast. Sadly mostly the yeasty notes were prominent in the flavor.
Next we tried the Chardonnay. It smelled delicious; very floral like orange blossoms. It was very complex, with quite subtle fruit and floral flavors and a slight buttery finish.
After the white wines we were on to the Grenache. This was Alena’s favorite of Kalyra’s wines. It was very fruity and on the sweeter side. It really reminded me of the red berry gusher candies I used to enjoy as a kid. I thought it was fun and tasty, but nothing special for the price.
Next we tried the 805/707 red blend with grapes from both Napa County and Santa Barbara County. This wine had some interesting herbal flavors as well as a black cherry and cocoa finish. Honestly it was served too cold. If it had been served a bit warmer it may have been less tight and more of its richer flavors may have shone through. But alas we will never know.
The last wine of the tasting was a delicious tawny dessert wine. The wine’s color was distinct. We googled the color to check if it was in fact tawny. We were delighted to find a picture of a cute little light brown/reddish owl representing the color that matched perfectly to this dessert wine.
I loved the flavor of this tawny. It tasted of nutty maple syrup. It was very smooth and neither to alcoholic nor too sweet tasting. The got it just right. It was definitely my favorite wine at Kalyra and lucky for me Alena does not like Port style wines, so I got a double serving!
After our tasting ended we braved the cold patio for our above mentioned delicious picnic. That Trader Joe’s truffle cheese is a miracle food!
I also found a cool little homage to Kalyra’s claim to fame in Sideways! Fun photos from the movie’s shooting were hung on a wall in the back. I only discovered the shrine by chance even though we had mentioned to our server that we were there because of the movie…
Overall we both had a really nice time at Kalyra despite being disappointed with the wines and the tasting prices. It would be a really fun place to enjoy the outside tasting/picnic area and gorgeous views when warmer weather rolls around. If we return for the views I will make sure to stick with that delicious Tawny!
We followed up our trip to Kalyra with a visit to Los Olivos for an awesome Olive Oil Tasting and a visit to the Ca’ Del Grevino tasting room. Rounding out an amazing Saturday in Santa Ynez all thanks to Alena!
Cheers and drive safe!
– Visited on January 5, 2019.
Alan Evans
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