This past weekend my fiancé and I escaped the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles and headed-out to Temecula, commonly known as LA’s wine country. We are both wine lovers and along with running this blog we run a wine blog together – BlogAboutWine.com. We are getting married next year and decided that a winery would be the perfect place for our wedding, the big question is – what winery, and what wine region?
We have a lot of familiarity with Santa Barbara wine country as this has been our normal stomping ground. For some reason, after spending over two years in LA we made countless trips to Santa Barbara, but not one to Temecula, until this past weekend.
One of the positives I heard about Temecula is that it’s about an hour closer to Los Angeles that Santa Ynez, Santa Barbara’s wine country. It normally takes us about two hours and fifteen minutes door-to-door to get to wineries in Santa Barbara so I was hoping for a pretty quick drive to Temecula.
We started the trip Saturday afternoon leaving around 12:00PM. Unfortunately we quickly discovered that the route to Temecula follows some very large and frequently congested freeways like I-5. This meant that we spent a long time sitting in the car puttering-along at 5-10 MPH. In the end it took us a little over two hours to get to our first winery so the drive was about the same distance as Santa Ynez.
What we love about the drive to Santa Barbara is the beautiful sweeping ocean views and small one-lane roads that gracefully take you from the city to the country. The last 45 minutes of the Santa Barbara drive are on a beautiful one-lane road literally out in the middle of the country.
The drive to Temecula was much different with major freeways the entire time and strip malls lining the sides of the highway. When we got there we felt a lot more like we were out in suburbia than in the tranquility of wine country.
Our first winery was one of the most popular ones in the region along the De Portola Wine Trail. When we got there the winery was absolutely packed and there was almost no room to squeeze in and taste. Once we got to the counter they told us we had to go back to the front and buy a set of tasting tickets. We’ve tasted wine all over the world from Australia to France to Canada and not once have we ever heard of these strange tasting tickets.
So, we got our tickets and headed back to the counter. It took about five minutes for the staff to notice us, they quickly poured our wine and then rushed over to other waiting customers. There was no “experience” here, no discussion of the wine, it was more like doing a tasting at a Costco or BevMo, not a winery. The wine was fairly mediocre as well and the room was so loud it was hard to enjoy the experience.
We visited two more popular wineries, each offering a similar experience. At the second winery I asked one of the staff members where we might be able to find a smaller, family-owner winery. The answer we got was, “Oh, sorry, I’m only 18 and I don’t know the area very well.” So we asked another person and they also didn’t know. Our second stop also had about five buses parked in front so we tasted our wine to the rumbling of bus engines and the smell of exhaust.
By this point we were pretty disenchanted but determined to find a winery that was a better fit for us. At the third winery we finally found someone who knew the area and recommended a small family winery called Doffo. This was exactly what we were looking for and soon we were talking wine with one of the owners. The tasting room wasn’t overcrowded, the wine was exceptional, and we had the chance to actually talk about the wine and learn about the winery itself.
This was a great end to our Saturday wine tasting adventures. That evening we went to old town Temecula, which we found had a lot of charm. It was a bit like traveling back to the wild west and before we knew it we were enjoying a glass of wine and dancing to some great live music. With lots of small shops, restaurants, and bars, there were a lot of options for dinner and nightlife.
After asking a few locals for restaurant recommendations we opted for an Italian place called Polumbo. The food was excellent and they had nice outdoor seating options which we enjoyed until it got too cold. Unfortunately their heat lamps were out of propane so we ate the first half of our dinner outside, and the second half inside. All-and-all a great experience and some truly delicious Italian food.
On Sunday we got up earlier to hit our first winery by noon. We started at Keyways, another winery on the De Portola trail that we missed on Saturday. On Sunday we opted for smaller wineries and ended the day with Hart, a very small winery known for having exceptional reds. The Cabernet Sauvignon was amazing and we ended-up taking two bottles of it home.
We had a nice end to the trip sitting out at a picnic table on the side of Hart, smoking cigars, and enjoying exceptional wine with another couple we met while tasting. The drive back was about 30 minutes shorter thanks to a bit less traffic taking just around an hour and a half door-to-door.
Overall it was a great trip but probably not the right wine experience for us. We like to go wine tasting to escape crowds and enjoy some time in the country with other people who share a passion for wine. Temecula’s wine country was insanely crowded making it hard to really enjoy the tastings until we found some of the smaller more niche wineries. The drive lacked the magic that we appreciate so much about Santa Barbara with the Ocean on our side and small windy roads leading you into the country.
Still, we did find some great wines and Doffo and Hart definitely made the wine-portion of our trip come together. With a charming downtown and great dining and nightlife options Temecula still makes for a great weekend adventure.
