When I revisited Santa Barbara County’s wine country for the first time in 10 years recently I thought I was in southern California. Wrong! Southern California starts south of the attractive Mission city of Santa Barbara with its popular university. Santa Barbara, well south of the wine country within the overarching Santa Ynez Valley AVA, is at the southern limit of the Central Coast AVA (a rather ridiculously extensive AVA which stretches as far north as San Francisco Bay). See this map.
In California’s coolest county I write...
