Santa Barbara Celebration of Harvest – La Paulee de Santa Barbara

Friday night of fest weekend marks one of the most anticipated events of the Harvest Fest – the La Paulee de Santa Barbara Dinner. This grand affair, held in the Solvang Veterans Hall, celebrates the winemakers and vineyard owners who work hard to consistently produce some of the best wines in the world.

The event is open to the public for $90/person. I’ve had more extravagant tasting menus in Chicago for a smaller price tag, but the vibrant representation of “local” at its finest was well worth the most expensive dinner of our trip.

Local venue. Local wine. Local guests. Local chef. Local ingredients. Local pork raised and plumped for the occasion.

The Local Trend has swept the nation but is becoming a diluted scene. Restaurants that feature locally provided cuisine are everywhere now, boasting the term like a Twitter hashtag. But we have to remember that “local” doesn’t mean ‘hormone-free’, ‘organic’, ‘free-range’, ‘grass-fed’, or any of the other hot-ticket food qualifiers. So what really matters is what the local area has to offer. It’s a game of “playing to your strengths” – something the Santa Barbara area has acres and acres of.

Santa Barbara Celebration of Harvest Festival – Day 1

There’s nothing like a good wine buzz. Cheeks flushed, limbs loose, warm belly – all the result of extraordinary care and effort to bring grapes to their most enjoyed form. My mother drinks white wine – chardonnay. Full-bodied, dry, oaky and buttery. I’m typically more of a red girl, but working in a restaurant family that heavily appreciates good wine, I’ve become more adventurous.

Scenic view from our hotel

Our love for wine guided our interests in embarking on a wine-centric mother-daughter trip. I let my mother take the lead with her suggestion of traveling to Santa Barbara, CA in October to experience the Celebration of Harvest Festival – a cost-effective way to fully enjoy every aspect of this region during the best season of the year. I needed this little vacation and I couldn’t wait to tune out the Chicago restaurant life and tune into some good eating and drinking.

After a grueling trip out of O’Hare, we drove up the coast from Santa Barbara to Buellton, where our Marriott awaited us. I literally (no, not figuratively) shed a few tears while taking in the mountains and coastline. We stopped at the local CVS for a couple bottles of wine to get our trip started. Our room wasn’t ready – the perfect excuse to grab lunch. The Marriott desk person suggestion Firestone Brewery down the street. Knowing we had a long wine-o fantasy ahead of us, we figured this would be the time to grab the first and only brews of the trip.