Happy Birthday to Jeff!

Last weekend we celebrated Jeff's 29th Birthday!!!! We started on Friday night by making dinner with my family and topped off the night with a birthday cake (vegan chocolate covered strawberry cake with a pastry creme filling...courtesy of Real Food Daily)! It was very yummy and didn't really taste much different from a regular cake! I told Jeff that we would be waking up early to head to Santa Barbara, but I did not tell him what we would be doing while we were there! Saturday morning we woke up early, got in the car and headed north! We got there early, checked in to our hotel and had a little bit of coffee before our ride came to pick us up! I notice our ride was there, so I went to tell Jeff and he walked outside to this...

A Jeep Scrambler...to take us on a wine tasting tour through the Santa Barbara wine country!

The day was amazing! We hopped into the Jeep with 2 other couples! They all happened to be kids in our age range (Yes! We still consider ourselves to be kids)! One of the couples was celebrating their 7 year anniversary, the other couple was celebrating his birthday also, so we all had a great time together! The ride up into the mountains was so beautiful! We stopped at a water reservoir for the Santa Barbara County! The weather was perfect, no clouds, the sun was out and as the day went on it got warm enough to take off our sweaters!


Our first stop was at Sunstone Vineyard! They make all their wines from organic grapes! Jeff, nor I are Merlot fan's, but they had the BEST Merlot that I have ever tasted! During our drive to this Vineyard, our tour guide/driver was telling us how crazy bachelorette parties on their wine tours are. He had some very funny stories to tell. So the first thing we saw when we walked into Sunstone's gates...a bachelorette party! Too funny!



Our second stop was Beckman Vineyards! Our driver happens to work there on his days off from driving Jeeps! This is where we tried our very first Grenache! They had just released this wine and it was a great purchase! The estate was so beautiful and scenic. We got to have our picnic lunch in a hidden gazebo next to a little pond!

Kalyra Winery was our third stop. It is an Australian Vineyard and had a very cool atmosphere! Outside was very beautiful and inside was set up like an outside Hawaiian Tiki Bar! We had 11 different samples of wines from here, but we were not too impressed with any of them. They had one decent port wine, but it was still a little too sweet for my taste.

Our final stop was Roblar Vineyards! We purchased a Rose and a Syrah. Almost every sample we tried here was very good. They just opened this vineyard about 9 months ago and it is a very beautiful vineyard and tasting room! Jeff and I love Pinot Nior, but we did not get to sample one on our tour. It was good for us though, because we got to expand our palates and find wines that we probably never would have known that we liked!

Sunday was Easter, so we slept in a little bit and then walked down to State Street to have coffee and lunch, then back to our hotel to layout by the pool overlooking the ocean! That night we had the pleasure of meeting up with Jeff's family in Goleta for Easter Dinner! We love getting to see them whenever it is possible!

We had such a great trip! The weather was amazing, the sun was out, we got to get out of L.A., and have the weekend alone! By the end of our trip we were not ready to come back to reality (work and school)! :(

I think for our next wine trip we will go down to the vineyard's in Temecula! We've heard some great things...can't wait!!!!!