April has been a busy month. After a few days in Anaheim, CA at the Disneyland Resort and a few days in Santa Barbara wine country, I’ve been working on getting caught up. The next thing I knew, it was April 22, and I haven’t written a single thing here this month–yikes!

So, I’d like to share just some random thoughts and observations about the trip. Our visit was definitely wine-centric. Over the course of six days (we lost one whole day to travel), I consumed or sampled over 100 wines. That’s quite a few.

• Santa Barbara wine country is gorgeous. Not only that, but the pace is a lot slower than Napa Valley.
• Santa Barbara wine producers are more likely to make Rhône varietals than they are Bordeaux varietals. Pinot Noir does pretty well here also.
• Los Olivos is a great little town with probably 15 or so winery tasting rooms located within a two block area on each side of the main drag.
• The food at the Los Olivos Cafe is very good. (This was the place where Miles did a little drinking and dialing in “Sideways”.) I’d eat there again in a heartbeat. Great wine list, too.
• Rosé wines are tough to find, but they’re very cool. We found one small producer that makes about 40 cases of a rosé at about $20 a bottle. We’re not sharing this secret source. Real men drink pink wines.
• Rusack and Sunstone get the votes for prettiest wineries and scenery. Just freaking gorgeous.
• Dogs are great additions to a tasting room or an estate.
• Solvang is like visiting a small town in Denmark once you get downtown.
• I wish I had a home in Ventura County and that it didn’t take roughly 4-6 hours to get there by air.

We had an amazing dinner at Disney’s Napa Rose, which I wrote up over at the blog, and don’t forget the podcast with Michael Jordan, the head sommelier and general manager of the Napa Rose.