Barco Estate's Wine Making Adventure: Day 29 - Stage 3 Day 13

The wine is doing fantastic... from what I can tell. I moved my wine out of the kitchen and back to the living room. I need to keep the wine stored at 50-60 degrees which takes me on the hunt for Mini Fridge October. According to my calculations, the diameter of my wine vessel is about 12.63" with a height of 26" (including the airlock) which most Mini Fridges should hold. I originally was searching for a kegerator but $300 for an old beaten up kegerator just sounds silly to me. An inexpensive Mini Fridge will have to suffice. Craigslist is where I've started my search but it looks like I will have to expand to costco and other 'for sale' websites due to the lack of mini fridge availability.

=========================================================================

The wife and I went to Santa Barbara this weekend. One of the places we visited was Santa Ynez Valley for WINE TASTING! We stopped by 4 wineries: Sunstone, Rideau, Buttonwood and Gainey.

Sunstone is very cool and had a great atmosphere. $10 for a regular tasting 5 and $5 more for their reserve tasting of 3. Definitely opt for the reserve tastings. Their white and rose were okay. Their reds were very decent but not worth the 45+ dollars per bottle. The reserve tasting is where it's at. We tried their Reserve Pinot Noir and let me tell you, the best Pinot I've tasted thus far. We ended up buying a bottle. This will go next to our Opus One Overture to be opened on a special occasion. The other 2 reserves were very good, including their award winning Eros.

Rideau is a New Orleans inspired winery. A fun atmosphere. The wines were good. We kind of went through here fast. Lots of grass to have a picnic.

Buttonwood's wines were just okay. There are on the more affordable side. But their cab was very drinkable. This was our least favorite of the 4. I swear, there was one white wine here that smell like manure. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.We poured this one out after the first sip. I have no clue why you would buy this.

Gainey - Second favorite place. The tasting room has low light atmosphere and lined stacks of barrels adding to the ambiance. I found out there were just for show and all their wines aging is done at their sister location. All the wines here were by far consistently good. The only reason we didn't buy a bottle was because we have a strict rule of not buying any wines after the 2nd winery; this rule does get bent from time to time ;)

Overall, we had a blast wine tasting in Santa Barbara. Going in a big group here would be fun.

Here are the wines we bought