Coastal Enclave Offers a Taste of Napa

As a preview to a planned food and wine festival next year and to spur consumer spending this year, the Laguna Beach Visitors and Conference Bureau is touting local venues that cater to visiting food and wine lovers.

Locals too may enjoy the chance to pamper their palate at three wine tasting venues.

Laguna Canyon Winery, which holds monthly tasting parties and winemaker dinners (lagunacanyonwinery.com).

The Gourmet Cheese and Wine Shop/Café run by the Laguna Culinary Arts cooking school has weekly happy hour events, including a Friday night happy hour with wine tasting and an afternoon wine tasting on the last Saturday of each month (lagunaculinaryarts.com).

California Taste Fine Wine, a wine retail shop on Broadway, hosts wine tastings on Friday evenings at 6 p.m. and Saturdays at 4 p.m. (caltaste.com).

The bureau also extols the wine list of a number of Laguna restaurants, including Claes Restaurant at Hotel Laguna, with over 900 wines on the menu and 25 different wines by the glass; Studio Restaurant at the Montage, which stocks 33,000 bottles; Sapphire Laguna restaurant, which boasts a master sommelier, Peter Neptune, who presides over their awardwinning wine list; Tabu Grill, recipient of the highest Zagat rating in Southern California, where selections highlight smaller, family-owned wineries and obscure labels; Splashes Restaurant at the Surf and Sand Resort, offering 20 selections of wines by the glass and featuring Flights & Bites Night every Monday and Wednesday; and Sundried Tomato where patrons have a choice of 23 different wines by the glass, and where Monday nights are Flight Night - featuring a three-course dinner with pairings during each course, and all bottles on the regular wine list are half off on Tuesdays.

Who needs Napa?