Wine Tasting at Ca’ Del Grevino

Alena and I ventured out to Los Olivos after our tasting at Kalyra to taste some olive oil and visit Ca’ Del Grevino. It was an impromptu visit that turned out to be an amazing tasting with delicious wines and an awesome host!

Ca’ Del Grevino is smack in the middle of downtown of Los Olivos, a short drive north from Santa Ynez. The town is quite quaint, hosting a number of wine tasting rooms, little shops and various tourism based endeavors in the antiquated buildings lining the main drag.

Our original impetus for the visit to Los Olivos was to taste olive oils at Olive Hill. For $5 you get a little bun of bread and your choice of 5 oils and balsamics to taste.

Alena and I had a great time trying a bunch of delicious oils and balsamics! My favorites were the truffle and jalapeño flavored oils and the Luca and Olio Nuovo extra virgin olive oils. The grape fruit balsamic was also delicious, especially mixing it with the truffle olive oil!

We ended up buying a bottle of the jalapeño flavored oil. I’m excited to use it to make some tasty salad dressings.

As we left Olive Hill and faced the down pour of rain outside, I noticed Ca’ Del Grevino was across the way. I recognized it as one of the Santa Barbara Urban Wine Trail wineries. It was one of the few that were supposed to have a tasting room in the Santa Barbara Wine Collective, but were no longer offering tastings there.

I figured we could stop in and see if they would honor the membership card at this location since the Wine Collective had suddenly stopped honoring the card.

Alena and I sat down at Ca’ Del Grevino’s beautiful tasting bar and were greeted by our host Anna.

I explained to her my SB Urban Wine Trail project and how the tasting room in Santa Barbara had recently closed.

Luckily we were still able to use the card and we decided to share a free tasting.

Ca’ Del Grevino offers two different tastings at their Los Olivos tasting room:

The Grevino tasting takes you through some of their higher end wines while the Element is a tasting of some of their older vintages.

We decided to go with the Element to give these older wines a try.

Anna was kind enough to start our tasting off with a bonus wine: the 2013 Grevino Chardonnay. It was light in flavor, but also very oaky. This Chardonnay would have paired perfectly with the truffle cheese we had snacked on earlier at Kalyra.

The next Chardonnay was a great drinking wine. A 2014 Chard, it it was packed full of flavor with fig, pear and nutty notes. I must say these are not the common flavors I find in a Chardonnay, but they were quite tasty and made for a well balanced wine.

That ended the whites and now we were on to the red wines. First was the 2012 Pinot Noir. It had an amazingly complex flavor profile. I was getting strawberry, dill and a lot of black tea!

Anna shared that her friend says this wine smells like confidence. With its meaty and musky flavors I totally get where her friend is coming from. I enjoyed the Pinot and all of its delicious complexity.

Next we tried two 2009 wines, the Syrah and the Dolcetto. The Syrah was very fruity with hints of Italian herbs as well. I was getting a candied cherry/strawberry flavor.

The Dolcetto was a very dark wine that smelled very sweet, but as Anna warned us, it’s taste was instead earthy and herbaceous. The first thing that came to mind was that the Delcetto would go really well with a big juicy cheeseburger!

Last on the standard tasting flight was the 2010 Trilogy: a blend of Syrah, Dolcetto and Grenache. It smelled big, bold and fruity. The flavors were complex with notes of black cassis, milk chocolate and sage.

Ca’ Del Grevino had three special wines that they were offering bonus tastings of. We tried two of them: their 2016 Grenache Rosé and their 2013 Grevino Riesling.

The rosé was fantastic. It smelled like pomegranate and had a beautiful dark pink color. The flavors were intense and complex, yet it was very refreshing at the same time. It was quite pricey, but tasted damn good.

The Riesling had the quintessential petrol/asphalt smell. This sounds disgusting and crazy and yet is a common characteristic of the Riesling varietal. Luckily they do not taste as they smell. This Riesling was true to form, being on the sweeter side and tasting of refreshing pear.

Our visit to Ca’ Del Grevino’s beautiful Los Olivos tasting room was the perfect addition to our day of exploring a bit in the Santa Ynez Valley. Grevino has an elegant tasting room some high end tasting wines. I was delighted with their full flavors and complexity. Anna being a great host further enhanced our visit. I recommend stoping in if you are passing through the area!

I hope to someday visit their main tasting room at their estate in Santa Maria and taste more of their great wines.

Until then, Cheers!

Alan Evans

– Visited on January 5, 2019