Solvang in detail...food and wine

Wednesday 29-April. After riding Figueroa Mountian Road our culinary odyssey started at Melville Winery, suggested to us by Thomas the Sommelier/Bartender at our hotel restaurant. Nice place (photo above) and great wines. The tasting room host, Alvin, was quite a character. He gave us two great suggestions for visits the next day...Palmina Winery in the "wine ghetto" and the La Purisima Mission in Lompoc. There is an understanding in the wine producing community that allows them to all plug each other's wines. However, the suggestion to visit the mission was mostly a shameless plug for us to go see some of Alvin's other work: besides working at Melville, he has been crafting models of each of the California Missions that are sold in the gift shops for the past 12 years. But that is for a later blog entry.

Back in Solvang we tasted at a couple of popular places. Seeking advice on where to eat later, the tasting room hosts were very helpful in suggesting Root 246, a brand new restaurant attached to a trendy new resort. Already we had received valuable suggestions from people who found out that we were newlyweds, but this experience topped everything so far. While deciding which lounge to hang out in for dinner (there are two separate lounges, one themed "white" for formal and the other "black" for a more relaxed atmosphere) we met Mike from Demetria Winery. He was in the restaurant showcasing their wines so we jumped at the opportunity to enjoy a flight during dinner. Mike snapped a photo of us and invited us to the winery, which seemed totally normal until he mentioned that we'd have to enter a gate code to enter the vineyard. He left us to enjoy our dinner, which was absolutely amazing. 

On our way out the door after dinner, the hostess asked us if we'd like to meet the chef, Bradley Ogden. Thinking he would just pop out and say hi, we were surprised when we were guided into the kitchen. The place was amazing! It was a highly refined assembly line of gourmet goodness, incredibly clean and stocked with the finest local fresh ingredients. We were really blown away by the whole experience, especially when the whole kitchen staff congratulated us as newlyweds.