The miniature donkey wasn’t happy to see us.
It was a small creature, looking like a gray horse but about the size of a labradoodle, and with bigger ears. It didn’t appear all that welcoming of our three horses navigating the trails around the 700-acre Fess Parker Winery property in Santa Ynez Valley, California, about two hours north of L.A. The animal took its place along the path, looking a bit menacing. Once we passed, it followed us warily until we were off its turf.
“They keep coyotes and predators away,” explained our guide, a young woman named Athena. “It’s their calls that scare them away. They can be very territorial and protective.” The donkeys are there to safeguard Fess Parkers’ herd of 250 wagyu cattle, about two dozen of which were ruminating in the shade of a spreading oak about 100 feet away.
The tiny donkey is just one of several delightful surprises we encountered during our visit to Santa Ynez Valley, sampling the hospitality of Fess Parker. Not the man, of course, who died in 2010. The mid-century action hero, star of Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone franchises, exchanged his coonskin cap for a vintner’s hat after the Hollywood gig ran its course and grew himself a big business.
A Parker Family Business
Today the Fess Parker companies include the vineyard and winery, the cattle farm, a luxury inn a few miles down the road in the town of Los Olivos, a separate boutique winery, and a Napa tasting room. It’s still a family business, now in its third generation of stewardship.
During our ride we prowled various trails through grassland, skimming the edge of the (coincidentally) adjacent Neverland, the property where the late Michael Jackson infamously operated an amusement park to entertain young children.
Most on point, we clomped past Rodney’s Vineyard, named after Parker’s late son-in-law. There, at an elevation of about 1,200 feet, a wide variety of Rhone-varietal grapes grow. We rode past several acres of meticulously tended vines of Syrah, Grenache, Sangiovese, Viognier, and others.
Pinots and Rhones: The Tastes of Santa Ynez Valley
After Fess himself retired from acting he bought the huge ranch as a family legacy. He figured he’d do some sort of agriculture with it. But his wife and business partner Marcy, an enthusiast of Burgundy wines, which is to say Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays, convinced him to give wine a go. In 1989 they planted their first vines.
Over the years the operation has grown from being seen as a lark of one of California’s first celebrity winemakers to a well-regarded producer of award-winning bottles, in both Burgundy and Rhone styles.
In 2010 the hard-to-please critic Robert Parker of the Wine Advocate awarded a Fess Parker Pinot 94 points. In 2016 a Chardonnay hit 95 points from Wine Enthusiast. Today Parker wines regularly receive high reviews from diverse critics.
Unlike many high-quality Santa Barbara County wineries, Parker has significant national (and some international) distribution, though the stuff you find at Total Wine isn’t the winery’s best. That’s reserved for California customers and direct-to-consumer sales.
Don’t Drink from the Spit Bucket
Fess Parker Winery famously appeared, disguised under the pseudonym Frass Canyon, in the classic 2004 wine travel buddy movie Sideways. In that film, Miles, a failing writer, is visiting Parker’s tasting room when he learns his novel will not be published. Thwarted by a pourer who refuses to over-serve him, he grabs the tasting room’s spit bucket, chugs from it, and pours it down his shirt.
“Fortunately, nobody’s actually tried to do that since then,” laughed Tim Snider, president of the Fess Parker enterprise and husband of Fess’ daughter Ashley. He was standing out on the winery’s generous patio, where most tastings take place today, beneath a canopy of sinuous fabric shades. (Our server said three people had actually tried to drink from the buckets. I made no attempt to reconcile the two versions of events, preferring to hope that the latter is true.)
The tasting room, depicted as an overwrought tourist trap when filmed 20 years ago, has been remade into an elegant space, all polished wood and native stone. “It’s a new look for us,” Snider said, “but we think it represents the brand well.”
A Drink with Fess
In 2024, the 100th anniversary of Fess’ birth, the front porch displayed a series of panels telling the story of his life: At 6’6”, Parker was too tall to be a Navy pilot. The future player of historical characters earned a history degree under the GI Bill.
The Davy Crockett miniseries and three seasons of Daniel Boone catapulted him into massive action hero stardom in the era of three-channel, family-dominated television. In 1985 the Republican Party courted him to run for U.S. Senate in California.
Pinot Noirs distinguish the wines of the Santa Ynez Valley, the chunk of Santa Barbara County where about a hundred other wineries are located. Due to a geological anomaly, the mountains run east and west in that sliver of California. This creates alleyways for ocean breezes that cool the hills and valleys closest to the coast. This makes parts of the valley ideal for Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and other cool-climate grapes.
We Chose the Enhanced Tasting Flight…
During our visit we got the Enhanced Tasting Flight, sampling the fruit-forward 2022 Ashley’s Pinot, a single-vineyard estate bottling. We also had a 2020 Syrah from Rodney’s Vineyard, which won 95 points from Wine Enthusiast. But most memorably, when I revealed my journalistic interest in 2024 being the 20th anniversary of the movie Sideways, the staff briefly conferred and brought out a 2005 Pinot, a wine nearly as old as the one Miles might have dumped down his shirt.
Unlike Miles, the wine was rich and mature — and a lovely way to top off a visit with Fess.
Chez Fess
During our visit to the Santa Ynez Valley, the Fess Parker Wine Country Inn & Spa, located in the town of Los Olivos proper, was fully booked for a wedding. The inn is well-known in Santa Barbara wine country, favored by the platinum card set driving up from L.A. for the weekend.
Happily, there was availability in one of the property’s two cabins located just down the street, accessed via an alley that runs behind the inn. They’re operated under the “passive hospitality” method, meaning you skip check-in and are given a code to let yourself in. One cabin, referred to as “World Headquarters,” is where Fess himself kept his office to tend to business affairs.
The cabins are a mix of rustic, comfortable, and quirky. We stayed in the one named “Chateau Relaxeau.” My wife and I found it a fine place to relaxeau, though when we pulled up the shades covering the doors leading out the rear of the unit we were surprised to see a courtyard full of people sipping wine. It turns out the property is shared with the tasting room of Epiphany, Fess Parker’s boutique wine brand, operated by Fess’ son Eli.
More Sideways Action
The Los Olivos area is a fine base for exploring the area’s wine country. The Foxen Canyon Wine Trail includes about a dozen wineries, including the well-regarded Firestone Vineyard and Andrew Murray Vineyards.
In small and dusty downtown Los Olivos, there are a dozen tasting rooms and a few good restaurants.
Eateries include Los Olivos Wine Merchant Cafe, a California-fresh bistro that’s another Sideways touchstone. Just outside the restaurant, Miles famously declares to his friend Jack: “I’m not drinking any f***ing Merlot!” It’s said that this one throwaway line tanked Merlot sales in the U.S. (Inside, we found a bottle for sale labeled “F’ing Merlot.”)
But our most distinctive meal was at Nella, the restaurant attached, as it happens, to the Fess Parker Inn. The food was elevated and elegant, and the wine list full of selections from the area, as well as from farther afield.
The best dish, presented beneath a layer of crisp frisee salad, was a serving of perfectly tender wagyu beef — a meal that put me in mind of some fetching miniature donkeys just a few miles up the road.
If you go
Where to stay
Fess Parker Wine Country Inn & Spa is luxe and expensive. Its two quirky cabins, World Headquarters and Chateau Relaxeau, are slightly less so.
The other accommodation located right in Los Olivos, the Inn at Mattei’s Tavern, an Auberge property, is high-end too.
Luckily, there are some worthy options not too far afield. In Buellton there’s the Sideways Inn, a rebranded, updated version of the shabby Windmill Inn depicted in Sideways. Buellton has many other mid-market options.
Nearby Solvang is a curious Danish-style theme park of a town. It may be worth a drive-by or a stop if you’ve got kids or a hankering for Danish baked goods.
Where to eat
The Los Olivos Wine Merchant Cafe offers well-presented and prepared California-style bistro food. Its kitchen uses some ingredients from owner Sam Marmorstein’s organic farm about a mile away.
Other nearby dining options include the Santa Ynez Valley’s only Michelin-starred restaurant, Bell’s, in tiny Los Alamos. (Note that this is not the city in New Mexico where the atomic bomb was built.) While you’re there, stop in at Clementine Carter, a storefront wine tasting room. It serves some of the most creative small-batch, well-regarded wines in the valley.
If you can’t get enough Sideways nostalgia, book a table at the Hitching Post II. There, Miles and Jack first greet the luminous Maya, Miles’ love interest. The restaurant offers well-sourced and expertly prepared barbecued steaks and a full menu of California-Western food. If you can’t book a table — it’s really popular — drop by the adjacent tasting room and patio. There you can taste owner Frank Ostini’s well-regarded Hitching Post Pinot Noirs and other varietals.
What to do
There are over 100 wineries in Santa Ynez Valley, and it can be hard to wrap your arms around an itinerary. The Foxen Valley Wine Trail is a good option; it’ll include Fess Parker Winery.
The website of Visit the Santa Ynez Valley can help you plan by organizing your trip around the valley’s different geographic areas.
Aside from the many wine-tasting opportunities, there are the horseback rides at Fess Parker and other wineries.
You can also ride what is billed as the highest, steepest, and fastest zipline in California at Highline Adventures in Buellton. It’s a thrill that provides a raptor’s eye view of the entire Santa Ynez Valley.
Many area visitors make a point of stopping at the roadside Ostrichland USA to say hi to the ostriches and emus.
Visit Santa Ynez Valley has a good list of things to do.
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Craig Stoltz writes the newsletter Eat the World.
