Bad pun huh? I know; I get that a lot, but there is a lot of truth in the pun. This wine region that
stretches south of San Francisco down to Santa Barbara is getting to be one of my favorite places in the wine world to visit. First, the wines are very good, from the rich, bold flavors of their Cabernets to the subtle, nuanced charm of their Pinot Noirs. They produce some top-notch Chardonnays that are both powerful and elegant, along with a myriad of white varietals such as Viognier, Roussanne and some wonderful Sauvignon Blancs. Yes, this relatively young AVA has certainly come a long way in a short time, with some very traditional wines from the likes of Laetitia, Tablas Creek, Au Bon Climat and Ojai to the more modern monsters from Saxum, Alban and Sine Qua Non.

 
The other reason I enjoy visiting is that I have met some of the more uniquely real, wonderfully
honest, fantastically generous people...I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. Not that the folks I have met in other places aren’t, but the people I met last week at the Laetitia Winery are in another stratum when it comes to being genuinely real (instead of fake real, if you know what I mean), from Carmen Hickey, who runs the show and seemingly is never without a smile on her face, to her son Eric, the winemaker, who in the middle of the harvest spent three non-stop days with u,s and Jackie Ross, who is in charge of marketing, who set the whole thing up…along with too many others to mention. What a great team of people working for a common goal of producing terrific wines and treating every one of their guests like long-lost members of the family.

Yes, it was fun drinking the delicious wines, eating the lavish meals and enjoying the beautiful
surroundings, but like most special memories, it’s the people you meet that matters most and this was absolutely the case last week at Laetitia, in the Central Coast.

  I will send some more notes about the wines in later posts, but that’s it for now. If you have had
any really enjoyable experiences in the Central Coast or another wine region, reply back to this post and share it with all of us.

 Ken Amendola, N. Florida Wine Supervisor

follow me on Twitter @abcwinekena