We spent the majority of our California trip last March in the parts of San Diego County that are home to one of the youngest established viticultural areas in the country – the San Luis Rey AVA. We may no longer be the wine aficionados on the same scale as a decade or so ago. Still, we always consider wineries and wine tastings as potential targets in any itinerary.
So we visited a few. The scenery and the ambiance were wonderful, the wine passable if not exactly exciting. And then one winery offered us much more than just wine, well worth a separate entry on these pages.
The Deer Park Winery and Auto Museum bills itself as “the world’s largest auto museum of convertibles & Americana.” It is, of course, a working vineyard, although in the early spring, the grapevines are largely still dormant and hardly anything to look at.
Surrounding the vineyard are three buildings housing over a hundred vintage cars.
The majority of the cars are American convertibles from mid-20th century, but there are a few older models and occasional imports from across the pond.
Every single car has an information board next to it, displaying the model name, years of production, original price, and the number of vehicles produced, along with other key facts and some history. The walls behind the cars are decorated with various auto-themed memorabilia. A true enthusiast of American auto history can easily spend hours here. I am not exactly such an enthusiast, but I can appreciate an impressive collection when I see one.
And it’s not just cars. There are collections of other vintage technological achievements, such as radios, TVs, photo cameras, typewriters, etc.
With such a humongous compendium of fun stuff, focusing on smaller individual details does not come naturally. But at some point, my lovely better half pointed out to me that I was basically ignoring the delightful hood ornaments, which ranged from relatively simple symbols to easily recognizable emblems to remarkably elaborate figurines. Afterwards, all I could do was go around the place focusing just on the ornaments.
For the record, we did partake in a tasting.
The wine was ok. The museum collection – really impressive.
The vineyard is located off I-15, a few miles north of Escondido. It charges separate fees for exploring the auto collection and for buying a tasting flight, and in my unscientific observation, people coming for both are in the minority. You get to see a few of the exterior-positioned cars even if you only come for wine, but obviously, the cars are the main attraction.