Hey everyone, doing a last minute trip to the area and needing a bit of feedback. Looking for a great brunch place in Ventura before some wine tasting. Heading to Ojai Vineyards after that and willing to take a drive to Santa Barbara for some more wine places. Looking for a great meal in the Santa Barbara area that is tasty and relaxing for us that night. The more recommendations the better
So basically, a brunch place, some wineries in the SB area and a great dinner spot. Ready, set, go!
I just did a similar trip. Ventura has some great local Mexican/Baja Mexican which doesn’t really lend itself to brunch, but it shouldn’t be overlooked. SB has lots of great wineries, but it depends if you want something in town or up closer to the vineyards.
Ojai has a nice tasting room and a decent tasting menu.
I may offend someone, but in SB I would avoid any of the tasting rooms in the part of town they call the “Funk Zone”. It is filled with more hipster places offering rather pedestrian wines IMHO.
In SB I have had good dinners at Bouchon’. Though there are lots of options in town for good eats.
Michael definitely willing to go out and about and visit vineyards out of Town, just using SB as a reference point 
I would just head to my neck of the woods and have brunch at the Ojai Valley Inn. The Oak is a beautiful place for brunch with an amazing view. The vineyard tasting room is great and they pour a library selection that is a must.
In SB, Sama Sama, Black Sheep, Julienne are solid places to eat. Some great wineries also…Au Bon Climat, Potek, Jaffurs, Sanguis
Have fun!
Favorite places to eat in Santa Barbara:
Opal for dinner need to make reservation in advance, lots of wine to choose from , house wine is Jaffurs.
Panino, love their sandwiches and salads for lunch.
Los Arroyos, best mexican in SB, also now in Camarillo.
Wineries:
Carr and Jaffurs in the funk zone, Jaffurs is a tasting room while Carr is a winery / wine bar and a nice place to sit for awhile.
Harrison Clarke in Ballard Canyon, you need to call Roger to make an appt. He will give you a tour of the vineyards, his wife Hilarie is the winemaker highly recommend.
Tercero (of course)
There is a lot of PN in SB county, I don’t drink it so can’t make any recommendations.
I wouldn’t put Jaffurs in the Funk Zone. They are a few blocks away. I would never include their great wines in the swill I had in the funk zone. ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
Ok its close.
The only other wine I have had there is Carr and the past few years I prefer it, I think their SBC Syrah out performs Jaffurs IME, but Jaffurs can still be great.
I think Ryan Carr has done an outstanding job and he manages many vineyards so he has a lot of grapes to choose from.
I agree Carr is good too. I just didn’t want you to lump Jaffurs into the others in the Funk Zone like Area 5.1 and Municipal. I really didn’t care for any of their wines.
These are some briefs notes/comments/thoughts on our trip. We went to Ojai Valley Inn for some breakfast and was delicious. That got us started to Ojai Vineyard for our first tasting. Had some great library wines to taste through including a 2002 Thompson Vineyard Syrah that was mind blowing. Unfortunately, they no longer make Had several dessert wines and the 2013 was very well made sweet but balanced nicely with some acidity. Tasted some old whites vs. new whites and really showed that these wines can age 15+ years.
Next we went to Au Bon Climat. We tasted through 15-20 wines so there was a lot of dumping to keep our head straight Overall I was not completely impressed with the wines. A lot of the pinots although varied tasted very similar to each other. They seemed to lack some focus to me. I can see where this is definitely a burgundian styled wine because they did seem to come off thin a bit and I am more for the new world stuff in pinots right now. To each his own I guess, we did pick up a couple of whites that were very nice.
Last stop was Jaffurs and apparently we saved the best for last in my opinion. These wines just popped out of the glass. The 100% grenache was absolutely yummy. Their 2 syrahs they were pouring one a Santa Barbara County and I believe the other one was a single vineyard were both sharp focused and lots of flavor bursting form the glass. We bought a lot of wine from them. I will seek some more in the future for sure.
Dinner was at Bouchon and was not disappointed. Ribeye for me and Duck for the wife with some excellent 2011 Jaffurs Syrah. Three tastings for the day was perfect and had a great weekend
Glad you had a great time. ABC and Jaffurs were the only two rooms we hit in SB on a recent trip and your experience mirrors mine exactly.
Nothing new to anyone on this forum, but Jaffurs is one of my favorite wineries, period. Great QPR’s and great people.