There's a riotous vegetable garden and a peach orchard just out back of the tasting room at Buttonwood. Wine barrels at the Foley Estates Vineyard and Winery. The region is simple, folksy, unpretentious. It's also strikingly beautiful. Unlike its wine-country cousin to the north in Napa Valley, Santa Ynez and its environs are not given over to carpetlike spreads of wine grapes.
Coast live oaks, valley oaks and scrub oaks pepper the landscape.
Land values have exploded over the past 20 years, severely undermining the profitability of cattle ranching. But grapes, by contrast, are proving worth their weight in fermented varietal juice. The industry here has grown 105-fold in 30 years. A freak of geology contributes to the favorable growing conditions. And that opened wide portals to the Pacific Ocean's cool temperatures.