Tooling Around the Wine Country

For our fifth year wedding anniversary, the wife and I headed up to Solvang, Ca. in order to go to a vineyard where one of our favorite wines is produced, Talley. We ended up having a great time and picked up a ton of wine, Solvang is a nice little town, even though everything but the restaurants and tasting rooms close at 5 pm. We went up to Arroyo Grande Valley where Talley was located and, also having found another wine we really enjoyed in Solvang at a wine bar, tried to visit Toucan Vineyards, only to find out that it's a 3 acre plot done by a wine lover and his wife. We were fortunate enough to discover that he was having a tasting right near where we were driving around in Arroyo Grande, Ca. We stopped in and ended up talking to the guy for quite a while, It's really amazing how much there is to know about wine, this guy knew quite a bit and I HIGHLY reccommend his wine (not that I'm any kind of expert). Particularly the 2005 Zinfandel and the 2006 Toucan Couvee. Really good stuff. Talley was good fun also, we picked up a couple bottles of the Pinot we love so much and ended up having a great time just tasting a bunch of wines there. The people in Central CA are very friendly and it was really nice just going around tasting some of the great wine they make up there. Highly recommended for even casual wine fans, no one is overly pretentious and everyone is really eager to help show you the ropes.