Four new California hotels to book now

Stay in SoCal’s “other” wine country

The Santa Ynez Valley is still, despite a star turn many years ago in the Alexander Payne-directed film Sideways, a relatively off-the-radar destination for most people beyond the Golden State’s borders. It shouldn’t be: it’s charming, far less subscribed than Napa or Sonoma, and the landscapes are proto-California – rolling yellow hills quilted with patches of vineyard and dotted by wide oaks, broken by the occasional frontier-era town (usually with a few clapboard façades still gratifyingly intact).