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The annual Santa Ynez Valley Scarecrow Fest is underway. Nearly 200 scarecrows are populating the Valley from Los Olivos to Los Alamos, each the creation of a local business or organization.

In Santa Barbara County -- where pinot and chardonnay, Champagne's main ingredients, flourish -- many of the top tier producers sell their bubbles from about $20 to $50 a bottle, with a few commanding prices above $60.  Many of them, like Lucas & Lewellen, produce the still wine locally and then truck the juice to an outside facility – a place called Rack & Riddle in Napa, mostly – to be further fermented into bubbly.  But a growing number, including Flying Goat Cellars and Fess Parker Winery, produce their sparklers entirely in-house, emulating Champagne’s classic methode tradit

With the harvest of wine grapes underway at wineries all along the Central Coast, a ceremony that's become a tradition at Lucas & Lewellen Vineyards took place Thursday inside one of the company's crushing rooms in Buellton.

About 20 winery owners, workers and visitors gathered around half a dozen bins filled with clusters of pinot grigio to witnes Father John Finley conduct a blessing of the grapes, asking not only for a good harvest but also a successful fermentation and bottling, ultimately ending with fine vintage varietals on consumers' tables.