Santa Margarita’s Ancient Peaks Café pairs wines with food

Santa Margarita’s only winery tasting room has a new feature — the Ancient Peaks Café.

Located on El Camino Real in the middle of the charming burg’s tiny downtown, the Ancient Peaks Winery tasting room opened in the fall of 2008. At the time, it occupied only part of the structure, but the winery’s owners purchased the entire building in early 2015.

“We love it here and knew we wanted to stay,” said Amanda Wittstrom-Higgins, vice president of winery operations at Ancient Peaks. (The label was established in 2005 by the Filipponi, Wittstrom and Rossi families, who also operate the historic Santa Margarita Ranch and the Margarita Adventures zipline tour company.)

In September, Ancient Peaks unveiled its newly remodeled tasting room. Featuring high ceilings and bright earth tones, the welcoming interior showcases the tasting bar and offers seating at high-top tables or a couple of sofas in a corner lounge area.

Tables offering family-style seating and an auxiliary tasting area are set up in the adjoining Cinnamon Room, named after a beloved, peculiar-looking cow that reigned over the ranch’s herds for 31 years. Her mounted head, which features one horn pointed up and the other pointed down, is tastefully placed on the wall, and a commemorative plaque chronicles her life on the ranch.

Several other tables are available on the wrap-around patio, a popular spot when weather permits.

In re-envisioning the Ancient Peaks tasting room, “We knew we wanted to offer a food component,” Wittstrom-Higgins said. To that end, a small commercial kitchen was added behind the tasting bar.

Available Thursdays through Sundays, the café’s focused menu offers several starters, salads and sandwiches, plus from-scratch soups-of-the-day.

“We wanted to do just a few things, but do them well,” Wittstrom-Higgins said. “We are, after all, a winery.”

Indeed, while noshing on your café bites, you’re welcome to have a taste, sip a glass or enjoy a bottle of Ancient Peaks wines.

To help develop the café’s menu, Ancient Peaks enlisted the input of two men with stellar culinary credentials: father-son duo Jess and Cheyne Jackson, who are chefs at their family-owned restaurant, The Range in Santa Margarita.

“All the food is created to elevate the wine,” Cheyne Jackson said. He not only grew up in the business at his father’s side, but also attended the Culinary Institute of America in both Napa and Hyde Park, N.Y.

Onsite cooking and plating is ably managed by café coordinators A.J. Teunissen and Shelly Miguel, who also collaborate on the menus.

In addition to a de rigueur cheese and charcuterie board, the café’s wine-friendly fare includes the Dougie sandwich with Black Forest ham and manchego cheese and the Karl salad with wild arugula, poached beets and goat cheese. Sandwiches come with a small side salad, and soup and salad/sandwich combos are also available.

Youngsters can enjoy a Buckaroo Plate with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, fruit and a juice box. And big kids can tuck into housemade blackberry cabernet sorbet served with a shortbread cookie from Just Baked SLO, the bakery and pastry bar located just behind the tasting room.

Although the backbone of the Ancient Peaks café menu is pretty well established, look for some seasonal touches from time to time. For example, as the prime growing season approaches, many fresh ingredients will come from Santa Margarita Ranch.

“In addition to wine, we are growing other crops on the ranch, such as corn and watermelon,” Wittstrom-Higgins said. “We are an estate-focused winery, so it’s fitting to share food grown on the same land as our wines.”

This story was originally published March 22, 2016 at 11:12 AM with the headline "Santa Margarita’s Ancient Peaks Café pairs wines with food."