Ventura is the place and Dec. 1 is the date for The Ventura Winter Wine Walk. There are actually a couple of things doing on the first Saturday of the last week of the year.
First comes the Holiday Street Fair, not a bad place to purchase one-of-a-kind gifts for the coming season. It gets underway at noon, encompassing the 400 and 500 blocks of Main Street. Live entertainment will serenade your shopping. That entertainment is free, as is the Holiday Street Fair as a whole.
Then, there’s the wine walk itself, a perfect perambulation of downtown Ventura that showcases some legitimately world-class wineries. Among the are Giovinnazzo Wines, Squashed Grapes, Gone West Cellars, Boccali Vineyards, Casa Barranca and four brix Winery. This part isn’t free, at least not the tastings. Admission is $45. That gets you a dozen sampling tickets, good for tasting locations throughout the downtown area. Organizers say one ticket is good for one two-ounce sampling, and that you can use two tickets per location.
Ventura itself is lovely, a throwback to California of an earlier era. Downtown you’ll find the Mission Buenaventura – as well as museums, art galleries great West Coast dining and plenty of boutiques.
A good place to begin your tour of what Ventura has to offer is the Visitors Center. It’s at 101 South California Street. There you’ll discover exhibits delving into the Heritage Valley, the pristine Channel Islands National Park, the local arts scene and such.
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