A stagecoach town that became a wine town

Los Olivos is barely six blocks, and it has been a crossroads for well over a century. The town grew up around the railroad and the stage line, and Mattei’s Tavern, built in 1886 as a stop for travelers changing from train to stagecoach, still stands at its edge, restored and serving dinner. At the center of town is the flagpole, the unofficial heart of the Santa Ynez Valley, ringed today by more than two dozen tasting rooms you can walk between in a single afternoon. The valley turned to wine in earnest in the 1980s, and one of its most famous early names was the actor Fess Parker, television’s Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, who traded Hollywood for a vineyard and built a winery his family still runs.

Because Los Olivos sits inland, warmed by a sun the coastal fog never quite reaches, it ripens Rhone grapes beautifully. This is Syrah, Grenache, and Roussanne country as much as Pinot, and the wines carry more flesh and spice than their cool-coast cousins.

The Los Olivos table

Los Olivos eats far above its size. The Los Olivos Cafe, the very spot where the characters in Sideways drank Pinot over lunch, still pours local wine beside rustic California-Italian plates. Newer arrivals have brought serious coastal seafood to the village, and Mattei’s Tavern serves wood-fired dinners in its historic rooms. Pour the town’s signature Syrah next to grilled lamb or a peppercorn steak, where the wine’s smoke and black-pepper bite lock into the char, or a Grenache blend with herb-roasted chicken. This is generous, sun-filled wine, and it wants generous, fire-kissed food.