Wine County Life… Let Us Share it with You
October 21, 2016
Sharing wine country, is what brings us pleasure– in fact, maybe that is wine country living.
The sun sets, it slowly sinks over the hills. The silhouettes of Valley Oaks stand solidly like statues basking in the last light of day. The heat of the day in wine country is replaced with a coolness inviting itself into open windows and resting on the vines to refresh them before the heat of the next day. Wine country life is romanticized for good reasons– plants love to grow here, grape vines thrive, beauty abounds. Even in California where seasons are limited to a brief Winter and an extended Summer, the seasons are experienced through the grasses of the rolling hills and the splashes of wildflowers in Spring. The vineyards are the barometers of the seasons. 
Something about wine country makes people think that their life will be one of calm and ease like the oaks that serenely dot the landscape, a place where nothing goes wrong. Not to crush the romantic vision, but all of us in wine country can tell you, we still deal with the cable company, our computers crash just like yours, our cars need repaired, we get the same seasonal viruses, and we have a never ending list of things to do, however we do get to occasionally soak in the sunsets and enjoy wine from our neighbor’s vineyards, or if you’re lucky enough, your own.
Having founded the Los Olivos Wine Merchant & Cafe in 1995, our lives were already immersed in wine and food, and the joy of sharing these palatable experiences. However, our story of discovering the true meaning of wine country living came in 2011 when we decided to convert the mother-in-law unit on our property into a vacation rental, our first Bernat Retreat.
The idea of having strangers on our property was a little scary at first. However, there is nothing scary about hearing these kind sentiments on a regular basis, “We don’t know who had this wonderful idea, but kudos to you! We’ve traveled all over the world at a variety of places from camping out to very posh resorts– this was one of the best!” Or this one from June 2012, “Escaping the city and enjoying this wine country paradise was much needed for us both.”
