MMMMmmmm...Wine

My husband and I went up to Santa Ynez wine country (Lompoc and Los Olivos) this weekend with friends. We drank a lot of great wine, and ate A LOT of wonderful food. Like a few other times, we headed out very early on Friday morning so that we could get to Ellen's Danish Pancake House to fill up on their glorious pancakes before drinking the rest of the day. (Ugh, when is lunch?) I highly recommend getting their "2x2" Danish Pancake special...2 Danish pancakes and two eggs. I also enjoy getting a hot chocolate (with a tower of real whipped cream) and a side of Polska Kielbasa. MMMM...good eats.

We visited with a couple of winemakers that we have met with before (Loring and Ampelos). Loring's fall mailing list orders just opened up yesterday. We're still trying to figure out how much we want (lots). Ampelos has a lovely pinot noir rosé this time around - we picked up a couple of bottles. What I really liked about their rosé is its sweet floral scent and crisp finish. It's not too overly sweet of a rosé. We also met Chad Melville, one of the winemakers of Samsara Wine (and yes, he's related to the Melville Wine family). He has a couple of very nice wines that were great fun to try.

The surprise wine of the weekend was Palmina. Not typical of winemakers in this part of California, Plamina makes Italian style wines. And they do a GREAT job of it. Tasting room manager Hether Briggs hosted a private tasting for seven of us on Saturday before their official open at 11:00 a.m. (yes, we were drinking vino at 10:00 a.m., perfect). These are all excellent food wines. While tasting, we were enjoying sopressetta, dry parmesan and bread sticks. We left with six bottles (Malvaisia Bianca, Tocai Friulano, Barbera, Dolcetto, Savoia and a rosé). We also joined their Stagioni Wine Club.

On Saturday evening, we enjoyed another visit to Mattei's Tavern for dinner in Los Olivos (it was Brian's first time there). They have the best steak EVER. So, of course everyone at the table got that. So funny. First, I started with the puree of summer corn soup. My main course was t heir 6 oz. prime fillet with caramelized onion potato gratin with a stilton cheese-port wine sauce. To. Die. For. For dessert I enjoyed their apricot raspberry almond crisp with vanilla ice cream. The apricots were amazing (came from the huge tree outside from where we were sitting). MMMMMMmmm.....steak!!!!!!! This is a "must visit" if you're headed out to the Solvang/Buellton/Santa Ynez/Los Olivos area. Make sure to call ahead for reservations.