Santa Maria Valley’s 34 tasting rooms on the Foxen Canyon Wine Trail near San Luis Obispo create a non-inflation vacation.
Even the world’s wealthiest can be price-conscious. Even a member of royalty, purchasing a precious piece of jewelry for almost $2-million in a Beverly Hills department store, sought a discount. After coming into the store three times, a deal was finally struck in the closed-off, secured jewelry section – $1.7 million was the eventual purchase price.
The thrifty shopper, wearing the new bauble, walked out onto Wilshire Boulevard and into the SUV limo for the short trip back to a very nearby luxury hotel.
The gemologist on the team that made the successful sale sensed that nothing is more precious than the quality of life, so she and the man of her dreams then agreed to relocate from the Hollywood scene. The couple went north by three hours to the Santa Maria Valley, committed to enhancing their lives together forever.
Ring Shopping
“Given her expertise, I told her she would have to pick out her own diamond engagement ring. There was no way I was doing that on my own,” admitted Alex Recsan, who left his television production job at Nickelodeon (where he even once had the dubious honor of being “green slimed”), to move to the Santa Maria Valley for their new life.
In addition to Gemology, she also had executive experience at Fox Television. Embracing the opportunity to help people, she was hired to work in human resources at Cal Poly Tech University in San Luis Obispo.
Recsan said she chose to order a classic Tiffany ring from The Real Real. The gem would be priceless to her, but presumably less than the $1.7 million diamond she sold to the Sultana.
Thanks to UPS, she was about to be Recsan’s queen.
“When the delivery truck showed up, I intercepted the box, opened it, took her into our backyard and proposed to her under the big tree,” Recsan recalled. “Every day I can see the special spot I proposed, and I go hug that tree.”
The couple married at the iconic, picturesque Santa Monica Courthouse, with the requisite photos on the scenic lawn. A merry band of family members celebrated with the newlyweds by visiting area wineries. Again, Recsan gets to celebrate every day because he was hired to work at a winery – Presqu’ile Winery, in Santa Maria.
Others Who Discovered a Sweet Life in Santa Maria
“Let’s start with some bubbly,” came the greeting from Recsan, who then poured Brut cuvee he described as “vibrant, but not too carbonic.”
Recsan met me at the front door of the winery and told the story of Presqu’ile’s owners, Arkansas oil industrialists Madison and Suzanne Murphy.
They created the contemporary tasting restaurant, with a breezy panoramic patio and a four-story, limestone winery over an underground cave. It was powered by solar panels in 2007 as an alternative to their Mississippi lake home named Presqu’ile (Creole for “almost an island”), which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
Now their view is their vineyard, the valley, and the Pacific Ocean below and 17 miles west.
Madison, the patriarch, rising from his lunch, greeted us as his wife led knee-high family members, along with Maya, the vineyard’s brown English Setter, toward the elevator and down into the cave.
Madison, alternatively, made his way to an internal video shoot in the courtyard where he strummed his guitar with a band and sang, “Oh my lord,” – an ironic lyric since he’d recently endured a lung transplant.
Sipping Something Special
Among the bottled creations of winemaker Dieter Cronje, an expressive South African, is a rare expression of the Aligote grape.
“It’ll getcha tipsy,” Cronje joked while sipping some with his winemakers at a picnic table next to the vats.
Cronje, a popular celebrity at local golf outings, was wearing overalls, and for a good reason, Recsan explained. “When the grapes really get going in here during production, it looks like a murder scene. Otherwise, it resembles a hospital lab.”
Diners can see the production through a window in the scenic rooftop patio. Here
Presquile’s Parisian gourmet chef Julie Simon, from a garden Recsan described as “her baby,” serves a $75 wine tasting and Mediterranean mezze he dubbed an “elevation of flavors.”
Out came gazpacho; chicken meatballs; crispy potatoes; yellow lemon hummus; a farmer’s cheese blend of sheep, goat, cow’s milk, and feta; Narin bread; salad; and a chocolate soufflé, all garnished by home-grown starflowers.
A charred-barrel-aged Syrah we washed the feast down with had hints of mescal and cigar tobacco.
Presqu’ile is creating a guided Polaris ride so people can be a part of the vineyard. “They can go past the eucalyptus and out beyond the avocado farm and see the pigs and goats before they reach the vines and actually taste the grapes,” revealed Recsan.
Stories of Santa Maria’s Visitors at Cambria Estate Winery
In wine, there is truth. The stories told by visitors gathered around a big, fireside, stone tasting table at Cambria Estate Winery, also in Santa Maria on California’s Central Coast, were stranger than fiction.
Kirstin’s mother had been a performing rodeo rider. Vanita recounted parachuting from an airplane.
Nicole’s husband had climbed Yosemite’s famed 7,000-foot El Capitan vertical rockface.
Katie revealed her husband is a firefighter in the “Hot Shot” brigade, while the woman next to her said she lives with a rocket scientist for Blue Origin. (Ironically, Vandenberg Space Force Base was just 24 miles from the winery, as the crow flies.)
The vintage aircraft of the Central Coast’s annual AirFest adds more skyward thrills across the dunes and beaches of the Santa Maria Valley each October, while Cambria Estate offers its own aerobatics: trained peregrine falcons.
The super speedy birds are employed to scare off the starlings and swallows that might gulp down the female-owned and operated vineyard’s grapes. Barbara Banke founded Cambria, and Katherine and Julia Jackson are co-proprietors.
Lisa Marie Hendricks, the blonde mommy pouring and describing Cambria Estate’s stimulating pinot noir and chardonnay to us, said she also performs in the nine-member, local “Brass Factory Band.” What an adventurous collection of conversationalists.
Come Fly With Me
The relaxed, Santa Maria setting is serviced by San Luis Obispo airport, which, geographically, is a three-hour drive south to Los Angeles or north to San Francisco.
Santa Maria Valley’s 34 tasting rooms on the Foxen Canyon Wine Trail, more accessible and affordable than Napa’s, create a non-inflation vacation.
A visit can include exploring the moonscape of the Guadalupe-Nipomo sand dunes, with the paw prints I saw left behind by mountain lions, via the Oso Flaco Lake boardwalk leading to a remote Pacific beach.
Where I Stayed and Where to Dine
My hotel headquarters was the comfortable, but energetic, Wine Stone Inn, a boutique hotel just as cozy as Old Town Orcutt. I found it to be walkable to the type of cute places for breakfast you would expect a village like that to have – Cups & Crumbs, and Kay’s Country Kitchen.
A culinary curiosity: luffa plants are edible. I learned this by visiting the greenhouses of Deanne Coon’s colorful, roadside attraction in Nipomo: The Luffa Farm (which is a rarity in the USA.)
Without the fumigating imported luffas must receive, domestically grown luffa sponges are sturdy, yet softer, as you learn in the gift shop.
Carnivorous food travelers come to this region, not Texas or Kansas City, for the dry rub, Santa Maria-seasoned, California cut, tri-tip sirloin barbequed on local red oak flame.
They eat the delicacy at BBQ pits as diverse as the local Elks Club to the historic Hitching Post, an old-school roadhouse fired up in 1952.
This is a casual, well-worn, destination steak house with chops so serious you can “eat some and ride the rest home.” But, like the Recsans and the Murphys, you will not want to leave. But you will likely plan to return.
Read more of Michael Patrick’s work at The Travel Tattler and contact him at MShiels@aol.com Order his book Travel Tattler – Less Than Torrid Tales at
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