Chauffeured wine tours from two locals this Passport season
Nobody knows at what point a newcomer becomes a “local,” but certainly people who grew up and went through high school in Santa Cruz do qualify. Two such indisputable “locals” are Austin Twohig and David Solomon, the owners of The Santa Cruz Experience.
Twohig and Solomon met when they were freshmen at San Lorenzo High School. After graduation from different colleges both men went to different countries (Twohig, to the south of France; Solomon, to Chili), while staying in touch by email. After a year of living in “great places” abroad, both of them reached similar conclusions simultaneously: (paraphrasing) “Hey, the place we grew up, Santa Cruz, is one of the best places on earth. Let’s go back.”
Both Twohig and Solomon realized that they preferred to work for themselves rather than for others. In brainstorming, they concluded: “Why not make our knowledge of Santa Cruz work for us” and the idea of guided tours of the Santa Cruz locale, particularly local wineries, was born. Twohig said, “This might be the only area in the state where someone can walk into a winery and actually be able to shake hands with a winemaker. In most situations the winemakers themselves are insulated by layers of staff. Our customers are blown-away when we tour a winery and then introduce them to the winemaker.” The business partners also said that they have access to wineries that are not normally open to the public.
Solomon said that, “We took everything we had, including the residue of college loans, pooled it, bought some vans, and started The Santa Cruz Experience with the idea of turning people onto the many unique things about Santa Cruz.”
The Santa Cruz Experience not only takes people on tours to wineries (how many times have you wished you had a designated- driver when wine tasting?), but also shuttles people to weddings, company team-building events, birthday parties, bachelor and bachelorette parties, family reunions, sightseeing, hiking and biking areas and “Any place you want to kick-back and leave the driving to somebody else so you can just ‘experience” Santa Cruz.” Twohig and Solomon have four 15-passenger vans, with access to more vans, as well as additional staff when needed. Coming up in just a few weeks, on Saturday, Nov. 15, The Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association is hosting their quarterly open-house Passport tours of selected local wineries. Many of these wineries are not easy to get to even if you have not been tasting wine, so this looks like a great chance to let a couple of friendly “locals” show you the sites and take care of the driving for you. We’re going that route. Hope you will join us.
For more information and reservations, contact: The Santa Cruz Experience: 421-9983;
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The Passport event runs from 11 am to 5:00 pm on Saturday, November 15th and will give you a chance to see many wineries that are not normally open to the public, plus receive Passport discounts. The fare for the Passport all day event is $40.00. You’ll find your money well spent.
Besides the Passport, other notable coming events are (1) the 25th Anniversary of the Evening of Wine and Roses on November 7th at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds, and (2) the weekly Wednesday Winemakers evening at the Shadowbrook Restaurant (475-1511). For details on any of these events please contact the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association at 685-8463, or at
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