We avoided the recent addition to tourist trappiness (The Black Jack winery made famous by the movie Sideways). Instead utilizing the system of tubes that is the internets (and map my ride) to find a local ride that would take us along Happy Canyon. I overlaid this with the google maps search of wineries in the Santa Ynez Valley... and Voila! A perfectly (almost) flat 30-mile ride that took us by a number of wineries that we could decide to visit on site.
1st up- we rode through the town of Los Olivos... a town seemingly built entirely around wine tasting rooms and a single general store. Because it was before 10 am and it would be more fun to visit the actual wineries... we pushed on, up Baseline Rd. to the Bridlewood Winery. We smelt and tasted our way through five wines... renewing our palate with some baguette and goat cheese from the grocery. Try the Pinot Noir for sure... it's the best.
Part of the tasting: keeping the glass. A little difficult on a bike, but in our slightly "happy" state (we are heavily training, slightly dehydrated lightweights), it made perfect since to wrap the glass in a paper bag and "secure" it in water bottle cage. But the wine glass was no match for the rough country roads and one good bump sent it flying — and shattering — on the roadside. Lucky though, al the shattered glass stayed inside the paper bag. So, we would not have any future unknown cyclist cursing our memory on Happy Canyon Rd.
We rode around to the town of Santa Ynez, CA searching for the second stop on our wine tour: The Artiste Tasting Room. If you have never been to Santa Ynez... there is one stop light (on the highway) and one four-way stop in this "horse town". In place of a white line on the road at the stop sign, there is a concrete slab with imbedded horse shoes that spell out "whoa"!
We found the tasting room tucked away down a side street, across the street from a post office straight out of Bonanza. The tasting room doubles as an art gallery with flair. The flair being provided by unfinished canvases, two easels set up in a sunny window, oodles of acrylic paints, paintbrushes, smocks, palettes, and a beret for patrons to test their artistic skills.
Each unique wine has its own original art work label from a guild that the winemaker supports. Right now they are all Impressionists (my favorite), but they are also working on a modern artist label. Anywho, the tasting included five wines, with the last being a port. We also got to try a signature wine from the last wine club offering... that's six tastings each, on top of the tasting from the previous winery. Let's say we wouldn't have blown a 0.08, but we were very "happy", especially Pete, as we rode along to Mission Dr. back to Buellton, CA.
We would have made it to without incident, if Pete hadn't have had a blow out just as we were leaving Solvang. He being a cyclist for longer than I know how to ride a bike, I figured he could handle the tube change. As a I watched, he took the tire completely off the wheel, accidently bent the valve stem on the new tube, couldn't get it aired on the tire, realized it had a hole in it, switched to my tube, aired it up, blew it out, then realized that the tube was pushing through a slit on the sidewall. By this time, we were both laughing hysterically... and since we were only three miles away, rode (or shimmied — Pete) our way back to the hotel. Something tells me that the normal bicycle wine tours have support vehicles that change flats :-)
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