I have to admit, Mike and I are unabashed and unrepentant Pinot Noir fans. We love the big, chewy and/or tasty pinots. Unfortunately, many people have only had the fairly lean ones.

As a result, they think that is how they taste. As a result, if we suggest a Pinot Noir, the remarks come back “oh no, we don’t like them.” The downside is they won’t know how good the grape varietal can be. Having said that, all varietals are good as long as they are paired with the right food.

Actually, we actually discovered our love for Pinot Noirs when we started exploring the Santa Barbara wine area which is known for growing wonderful full bodied Pinots. The weather is perfect in Santa Barbara (for more than just wine). There are cool evenings and warm days that allow this difficult grape to flourish. The first time we went there, it was to celebrate one of our many great anniversaries. We stayed at the Bacara Resort. It is a beautiful resort in Goleta (just outside of Santa Barbara).

It is about an hour away (and a world away) from the wine region but they gave us wonderful advice about going to the wine area. We had dinner in their great restaurant (which we understand is being renovated for a renewed opening this summer 2016). They also let us go on a tour of the kitchen and the bakery on site. Loved seeing that part of the hotel almost as much (okay, maybe more) than the great messages we had while we were there. We had long discussions about Santa Barbara wines with their sommelier. He was so helpful. He also suggested places we might want to visit. And visit we did! We fell in love with the Santa Barbara wine area and from then on, we were hooked on the wine region with all of the wonderful wines and stories about wine.  One of our favorite places is Los Olivos in the heart of the Santa Barbara wine area.  There are so many little towns to explore as well as little wineries but I will talk about them in the next section.

First of all, I don’t want anyone to think we are wine experts because we aren’t. We do like to read and research wines and we go to many little boutique wineries to find out how they got into winemaking and why they make the type and style of wine they make. It is fun, educational, and delicious for us. In fact, I love it so much I took a wine tasting certificate class at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa. It was my idea of heaven just being at the CIA in Napa. On with the blog. I thought I would start with a little bit of a primer on Pinot Noir, talk about places we stayed and food and wine we drank. Along the way, we will talk about pairing it with foods we love to cook. You may be lucky enough to find some matching recipes in the recipe section of Recumbent Gourmet.com.