Young tourists love Cali wine country — for everything but the booze
If Central California’s Santa Ynez Valley, in Santa Barbara County, is known for anything, it’s wine.
It’s nowhere near as famous as Napa or Bordeaux, of course, but this bucolic region of rolling hills dotted with stately oak trees produces excellent pinot noirs and chardonnays and syrahs. Remember the movie “Sideways,” about two sad sacks rolling around wine country and complaining about merlot and their love lives? The film sank merlot’s reputation for decades and elevated pinot’s, dramatically, and it was almost entirely filmed in and around Solvang, Buellton and Los Olivos.
Truckloads of wine enthusiasts flocked here after the Oscar-winning flick was released 20 years ago, and they haven’t stopped. But they have changed, in an important way: today’s tourists are less interested in wine, these days.
Across the industry, winemakers and wine marketers are freaking out. Sales fell 2.6% globally in 2023, from the year prior and 3% in the US.
Younger millennials and Gen Z are drinking less alcohol overall, and when they do loosen up, they’re distracted by all sorts of consumption competition, from craft beer and cocktails to hard seltzers.
A boom in demand during the first years of the pandemic led to a frenzy of overproduction, and now a glut, at the worst possible time. In July, California’s Vintage Wine Estates, one of the country’s largest producers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is liquidating its assets.
As the dust settles, regions that could once rely on a steady stream of year-round wine aficionados have been forced to pivot, and to tell a different story about why wine country is still worth a visit.
In the Santa Ynez Valley, that’s not a hard sell. The region is stunningly beautiful, six charming towns strung together by curvaceous road and gravel biking roads and hardy hikes into the surrounding mountains — or in the vines themselves.
“Hiking on the ranch is just gorgeous,” said Samra Morris of Alma Rosa Winery, which now offers guests guided hikes. “You’re going to see deer, chanterelles growing, wild turkeys that run by you and fog swallowing the mountains.”
Solvang’s Danish roots are on display throughout the town, from its blue-and-white architecture to an impressive collection of dangerously delicious pastry shops featuring brunsvigers and fastelavnsboller, but it’s also home to no less than three restaurants in the Michelin guide, one of which is a Bib Gourmand.
“Younger generations want experiences; they don’t want to just go sit in wood-paneled tasting rooms indoors and enclosed,” said Anna Ferguson-Sparks, who does marketing for Solvang. “They want views, grass all around them, farm animals. They want to move around, to eat in a winery setting.”
The valley has always been a big cycling draw — this is where Lance Armstrong once trained, and plenty of pro cyclists live here still — but it’s also had a healthy amount of wine tourism, too. But Corey Evans, who owns Santa Barbara Wine Country Cycling Tours, says that lately his clients are less likely to be interested in post-ride alcohol, so he’s expanded the options.
“We’re getting especially the younger crowd that isn’t drinking at all, so rather than going to a vineyard we’ll set up at a park, or an apple orchard, and do a local farm-to-table lunch on a picnic table,” Evans said. “We’ll sometimes customize tours with olive oil tastings or cupcake tastings.”
On the central coast, visitors to Paso Robles’ Linne Calodo aren’t necessarily less frequent, but they come at less predictable times, said winemaker Matt Trevisan. He’s confident that vintners committing to the craft not just as a business venture but as a lifestyle will have no trouble riding out the modern moment.
“People have always come here to ride their bikes, on relatively traffic-free roads,” Trevisan said. “Going out to the countryside is a pleasurable experience. The culinary scene is also great. You get outside the city into a small town. I like to share this experience with other people. Wine’s been around for thousands of years. It’s not going anywhere.”
“We’re getting especially the younger crowd that isn’t drinking at all … so we’ll sometimes customize tours with olive oil tastings or cupcake tastings.”
Corey Evans of Santa Barbara Wine Country Cycling Tours
In Napa, winemakers who make sparkling wines that are naturally low alcohol and higher acid are finding themselves in demand, said Allison Wilson, director of vineyard operations at Domaine Carneros.
“Boomers are really into buying their wines and having a wine cellar and aging them,” Wilson says. “I think younger generations just have less patience, and less money, to be honest. They’re drinking what they buy.”
There’s also an effort to make the market of wine drinkers a bit broader. In 2022, J Vineyards launched a program called Shifting the Lens, which pairs chefs from minority backgrounds with winemakers for twice-a-year residencies, which culminate in a dinner series pairing unlikely cuisine with wine.
August’s residency featured Los Angeles chef Rashida Holmes, who matched up some of her Bahamian favorites with various J wines.
It’s happening outside California, too. Oregon’s Willamette Valley was recently listed among the top destinations in the US for biking in wine country, and neighboring McMinnville has several shops offering analog and e-bike rentals to visitors who can ride dozens of trails that meander throughout the valley.
Each year, there are harvest festivals featuring music, vendors and family friendly activities.
“People are coming for more than just wine,” said Heather Miller of Inn the Ground, a farm-based luxury property near Carlton in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
The inn offers free farm tours to anyone staying on the property, and recently added a more robust tour that ends with a crudité platter including local preserves and meats. “They’re hiking, taking day trips to the coast. Wine country is nicely situated for people doing a tour of Oregon to stop for a couple days on the way to somewhere else.”
In Walla Walla, Wash., while wine is still the biggest tourism draw, but visitors’ interests have shifted, says Morgan Davis, general manager of the Finch, a boutique hotel that features a series of bicycle storage lockers around the property.
In 2023, the hotel began a new collaboration with Kickstand Tours, offering the company a basecamp to launch tours that begin and end at the hotel. “We’re seeing a substantial change in tourism,” Davis said. “There’s more focus on outdoor recreation, arts and culture, food and agrotourism. We have a sprawling countryside perfect for leisure riding on e-bikes and road cycling, as well as the virtually untapped Blue Mountains foothills.”
Mike Martin owns Walls Vineyards and a restaurant in Walla Walla, but he gets it — he moved here for the golf, not the wine.
“There’s a hell of a lot of cycling, mountain biking. Bluewood Ski Area if you hit it on the right days is a fantastic day of skiing,” he says. “There’s hiking, biking, golf, world-class fly fishing. It’s an outdoor paradise as much as it is an eating and drinking place.”
While wine is facing what Martin called “demographic headwinds,” people are still drinking wine, he said, just differently. Visitors spend more time at fewer wineries, which “raises the bar for places like the Walls to make things more immersive,” he said. “We added a food program to our tasting, which is already a fairly immersive side-by-side five-glass tasting with the opportunity to top up into our Pášxa wines. It’s not built for people to pop in and out.”
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