Searching for Sonoma in a Merlot Desert

While many Sonomans donned togas and attempted to drown themselves in wine at the annual cultic revel now known as the Sonoma Wine Country Weekend, I was busy doing reconnaissance work in the other wine country. Not Napa, but the other, other wine country – the one a few hundred miles south in Santa Barbara County – specifically, the rural villages of Santa Inez, Solvang and Los Olivos, where signs that read “As Seen in ‘Sideways’” still attract tourists like moths to waning klieg lights. That is, if moths wore fanny packs and feigned a comic distaste for merlot.

The place, of course, was swarmed. Forget the moth simile – these people were locusts, locusts that descended upon tasting rooms and left clutching multiple bottles and often cases clutched between their twitching forelegs (and fanny packs). All this commerce was due, in large part, to a movie that came out five years ago. It’s the wine world analog to “George Washington Slept Here.” While undercover (read: I kept my reporter’s notebook in my coat pocket, forgoing my media discount), I canvassed several tasting rooms and wine shops. At each, I searched vainly for Sonoma wines. The closest I came to one of our own bottles was in a shop that stocked Smoking Loon cabernet – a brand concept courtesy of local wine marketing mavens Don Sebastiani & Sons, which hails from California, but not specifically Sonoma.

Interestingly, Napa County wines dotted the shelves with alarming frequency – from an Aquinas cabernet from Napa Valley (an under-$20 bottle also made by Don and Sons) to a $124 Rudd Winery and Vineyards cabernet (admittedly, the Rudd label caught my eye because its namesake gave my wife and me a toaster oven upon our nuptials, which was the same price). So what’s the deal? Did Napa sneak off and court towns in the Santa Barbara area as sister-cities? Or did it become sister-cities with one of Santa Barbara’s sister-cities so as to become a step-sister city? Sonoma itself has so many sister cities, we might consider a paternity test to make sure they’re legit, especially since none, so far as I know, directly promote Sonoma wine product. Meanwhile, I can get Napa’s Folie A  Deux in Solvang (whose sister city is Aalborg, Denmark, if you have to know). As for the ubiquity of Don & Sons products, I attribute this to sharp business acumen paired with a dash of dynastic provenance. When I start my “Daedalus” negociant brand I’ll be sure to call them for a consultation (if they haven’t already got one seeing as they seem to boast a brand for all occasions).

The only truly Sonoma wines in Santa Barbara County, methinks, were the ones I brought with me. When showing off to my Southern California cohorts, I usually bring a couple of bottles bearing the names of people I can namedrop with abandon. On this trip, I brought a fab cab by Benziger Family Winery and got blotto on a rosato by Muscardini Cellars. Both showed well, but when they were emptied, so apparently went Sonoma’s representation in this part of SoCal. What accounts for the lack of market penetration in this area? Lack of willing distributors? Limited marketing outreach? Togas?

Consider the fact that some of our tasting rooms charge $10 for a round of tastes, which is not deducted from bottle buys. In at least one tasting room in Los Olivos, you get to keep your glass – not for altruistic or promotional reasons – but because tasting rooms aren’t allowed to have sinks due to the area’s water conservation issues. An odd by-product of this phenomenon is that the only way to cleanse one’s palate between wines is with more wine. Mysteriously, by the end of a tasting, one is in buying mood.

While I write this in a tasting room (the wifi password for which is, go figure, “pinot noir”), I’m compelled to believe that we may need to create our own movie to compete. To wit, I’ve decided to pen what I’m currently calling “The Untitled Sonoma Wine Comedy” and invite those in the biz, from the tasting room to the cellar floor to send me anecdotes, true stories and, um, wine. You know, for research and inspiration.

Tagged as: los olivos, santa barbara, santa ynez, solvang, sonoma, Wine