Santa Barbara in southern California has a thriving wine trail
Next time you adventure through California, stop off at Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone, packed with left-field tasting rooms and exciting wines.
ALONG LAYOVER at LAX can be nothing short of horrific. For Australians heading home, it can be an anxiety-provoking experience akin to an episode of The Walking Dead; travel-weary zombies abound. Thankfully, about two-and-ahalf hours up the road is Santa Barbara, one of the most picturesque and underrated cities on the SoCal coastline. Make your way to this coastal paradise to dig a little deeper and it won’t be long before you stumble on the curiously named Funk Zone. This area is home to a wine-tasting experience that’s redefining the way local wineries are reaching the next generation of connoisseurs.
Easily visited in a day – and potentially between those connecting flights – Santa Barbara is better known by its local moniker, the American Riviera. Here, exclusive homes with endless views sit perched in the Santa Ynez Mountains hiding posh retirees and some of Los Angeles’ most wealthy. The likes of Tom Cruise, Jennifer Lopez, Katy Perry and even Kevin Costner all have houses here. But spend a few hours wandering the palm-draped foreshore of Lower State Street and you’ll see this seaside neighbourhood has emerged into something much more hipster than Hollywood. Bordered by Highway 101 and the Amtrak Station is the Funk Zone, a reclaimed industrial precinct of converted warehouses and rail sheds with graffiti murals that are stacked like mismatched pieces of Lego. What makes this new bohemian haunt so special is how cafes, galleries and surfboard shapers sit side by side with one of the most unique wine tasting experiences in North America. There’s not a decanter in sight in the Funk Zone. Instead, the precinct plays a central role in the city’s Urban Wine Trail, a choose-your-own adventure style of tasting experience that starts right in the heart of the Funk Zone and then tentacles out into four other neighbouring precincts.
The trail brings together more than 20 tasting rooms from wineries around the Santa Barbara County, and makes a mockery of the stuffiness and usual decorum reserved for overpriced tastings in other parts of the state.
Modern and established winemakers from around the county now use the Funk Zone as their ground zero for testing new products with locals and tourists alike.
Santa Barbara Winery, which was one of the first on the trail, and Municipal Winemakers are a couple of the local favourites, and sauntering between the two for an entire afternoon is perfectly acceptable. Municipal Wines’ esteemed winemaker Dave Potter is another piece of the puzzle as to why Santa Barbara’s wine scene is
What makes this new hipster haunt so special is how cafes, galleries and surfboard shapers sit side by side with one of the most unique wine tasting experiences in North America.
so fun, whimsical and approachable. Their tasting room makes use of an old diving shop where up-cycled decor finds a comfortable place alongside wine drinking fountains that patrons can help themselves to. You’d be forgiven for thinking that you’d stepped into another wine dimension, so don’t feel bad for leaving your etiquette at the door.
Just a short stroll away, it can feel like you step through a space and time continuum when you enter Municipal’s little sister winery, Potek. This is another of Dave Potter’s creations, and it sources some of the most interesting grapes from around the city in order to create Old World styles. Its famous Rancho La Vina Pinot Noir is a must-try.
As the warm winter sun starts to sets over the Pacific Ocean and you continue to stroll around the wide open streets, you might
notice a light, cool surf mist that seems to linger in the air. As dusk turns to dark in the Funk Zone, and lights spring to life on the al fresco dining areas, that damp fog brings a saltiness on the lips and wide-eyed students from the nearby University of California Santa Barbara. These students, and their wallets, are another large reason for the resurgence of this once-industrial wasteland.
Our bartender at the Santa Barbara Winery explains that when it comes to growing grapes in California, not all valleys are created equal. There is just a handful of valleys between Santa Barbara and San Diego that are known as ‘transverse’, which are coastal valleys formed around 20 million years ago, connected to an east-west oriented mountain range.
Santa Barbara County is home to a spectacular transverse valley, known for its ability to trap cool air and create a climate ideal for growing world-class pinot noir and some of the most remarkable
Modern and established winemakers from right around the county now use the Funk Zone as their ground zero for testing new products with locals and tourists alike.
chardonnay on the planet. It’s in this coastal paradise, where the surf meets the mountains, that the ‘where and how’ of wine tasting is being challenged by avant-garde growers and embraced by the local government. If word gets out, it won’t be long before they need to fight off a horde of wine-loving Australian travel zombies excited to find this brilliant way of filling their inevitable layover at LAX.