Search the largest collection of quality cocktail recipes.

Copyright 1995-2004, Cocktail.com Inc. All rights reserved. For more information, please e-mail us. Thank you for visiting our site.

A Spirited California Odyssey
Wine-ing your way up the coast

Highways One’s infamous hairpin turns just north of San Simeon, Calif., are enough to turn anyone into a pagan.

Believe me. On a late December morning I survived a crash-course in alternative religions, courtesy of the Golden State’s scariest two-lane road.

Picture this: to your right, a steep incline from which dry grass and cactus emerges in uneven patches. To your left, sheer cliff plunges into the Pacific Ocean hundreds of feet below. Ahead, the red taillights of a pickup truck weave in and out of the intermittent fog.

Terrified yet?

Now imagine that your job is to taste wine, and you happened to have skipped a series of vineyards about an hour ago. Too early to drink, you said to yourself. It’s enough to make anyone believe that Bacchus, the legendary Greek god of wine, is watching over you.

“Good thing we didn’t stop back there,” I say as I notice, for the first time, the unusually white hue of my knuckles clutching the wheel. “Otherwise we’d be down there.”

My passenger (who coincidentally edits this Web site) isn’t amused by these spiritual reflections. She holds the base of the emergency brake in her left hand, the side of her seat with the right. Aesthetically, this is the high point of a six-day tour of California ’s best wineries – a stunning seascape of dark blue waves, otherworldly rock formations and exotic birds – but she isn’t paying much attention to it.

Neither am I.

Instead, we’re somewhat fixated on surviving this episode of our adventure. Bacchus would have his way with us tomorrow just as he did yesterday, when we polished off an entire bottle of Rideau Vineyards Chardonnay in our suite at the Santa Maria Inn.

But for now, he is keeping us on the straight and narrow. Literally.

California is a driving kind of destination, which is good for motorists but not so good for motorists who drink wine. Our road trip, which began in Southern California and wound through Santa Barbara, the central valley and was to end in the wine Meccas of Sonoma and Napa, demanded that we take turns as designated drivers. Some things, we figured, even Bacchus can’t get you out of – the slammer being one of them.

But our trip had a more serious purpose than an unlikely, if not implausible, discovery that the god of spirits might keep us from steering our car off a precipice. We were after the perfect compliment to a cocktail: a light bubbly white wine that would mix well into any beverage. The wine would come back to Maryland with us and run through a series of tests, the results of which would be published on cocktail.com.

We had started in Solvang, the Danish village that features faux European architecture, cobblestone sidewalks, and at least two excellent bakeries, which is more bakeries than in all of Los Angeles County. Solvang is about two hours north of the City of Angels if you drive reasonably fast. Take away the tour buses and the Thomas Kinkade gallery, and you’re left with a charming little town.

But alas, commerce inevitably wins out over charm these days. There’s no better an example than what’s happened to the wineries during the last year or so. Almost all have instituted a tasting fee – some throw in the glass as a memento. So we visited an ATM to get enough cash (fees range from $3 at smaller wineries to upward of $12 for premium wine tasting at the largest wineries.) The Santa Barbara County Vintners’ Association publishes the best map of the area, which can also be downloaded from its Web site.

Among our favorites: Daniel Gehrs, which made a truly remarkable Pinot Noir. This family winery was unassuming and friendly. Gehrs says he liked wine and decided to “go for it” when he went into business for himself. After sampling almost every varietal at its store, we wanted to go for it, too. In fact, we bought a case for further analysis, even though it wasn’t a white wine. Maybe Bacchus would guide us to a nice Riesling later.

After surviving our near-death experience on Highway One and finding religion the following day, it was on to Sonoma. From our base at MacArthur Place, we were within striking distance of the county’s most famous wineries – Sebastiani, Ravenswood and Buena Vista, to name just a few. But we were on the lookout for something more obscure, so we skipped the well-known establishments (but not before dining at Saddles, MacArthur’s incredible steak restaurant) and headed north.

We ended up in the Dry Creek, a region known for its robust Zinfandels rather than its white wines. Struck out again? Not really. One notable exception was the Martinelli winery – we dubbed it the “winery with attitude” because of its perpetually cranky staff – which produces some wonderful Chardonnays every other year or so. A few miles up the road we found an extraordinary Pinot Noir at the Porter Creek vineyard, a winery so small that you will miss it if you blink.

Our advice: don’t.

But on this day, Bacchus would let us down once again. We drove as far north as Everett Ridge, where we picked up a case of its 1998 Dry Creek Zinfandel. I didn’t mind that we were getting nowhere in our search for the perfect white wine; there’s no prettier a place in Northern California than this corner of wine country. Being the end of the year, too, we encountered few other people. At every turn, there were rolling hills covered in vineyards and golden grass with fruit trees and bright flowers. Postcard-perfect.

The last day brought new hope to our mission. We’d heard about Napa’s world-famous wineries, and we were sure that this time, we’d find what we were looking for. Bacchus had brought us this far. He could not let us down.

Or could he?

Let’s start with the good news: we found Napa to be as picturesque as Sonoma, a place begging to be described in superlatives. We checked into the Meadowood, a resort that’s a worthy complement to the magnificent scenery. As a bonus, the property even comes with its own wine expert on staff to assist guests with our kinds of questions. Yet, as it turned out, we were disappointed by the mega-wineries of Napa, including the laughably Hollywood-ized Sterling vineyard, which offers cable car rides to its wine tasting room. That wasn’t what we had in mind.

We were ready to give up when we decided to make one last stop at the small Summers winery. It’s easy to overlook this vineyard because it’s in the shadow of Sterling and several other Napa wine institutions. Summers specializes in an Italian grape varietal called Charbono, although it makes an outstanding Zinfandel as well. Wouldn’t you know it - we came away with yet another case of red wine.

Now, under ordinary circumstances, I’d say we visited the wrong wineries on the wrong day. But I have to wonder if Bacchus is often confused for another Greek deity called Ate.

She’s the goddess of, among other things, mischief.

-Christopher Elliott