This Central California Town 'Is Like Napa 50 Years Ago' — and It Just Got a Gorgeous New Hotel That Dates Back to the 1800s

The Inn at Mattei's Tavern, Auberge Resorts Collection, offers a glimpse of Santa Ynez Valley culture and proximity to downtown Los Olivos.

Nothing thrills Angelenos more than picking a spot within driving distance and making that destination their entire personality. There are the Palm Springs loyalists, who worship in the midcentury modern church of pastel colors; the Santa Barbara crowd, who come home with a new, distressed-wood decor piece from a local boutique after every visit; and, of course, their more spiritual neighbors, the Ojai faithfuls, who love nothing more than a canyon hike.

Recently, Los Angeles road trippers have fallen hard for Los Olivos, an adorable town in the Santa Ynez Valley, about 30 miles north and inland of Santa Barbara. It’s home to wineries with a cult following — like the beloved Stolpman Vineyards, a.k.a. the producer of Love You Bunches; a new restaurant from the chef behind Los Alamos gem (and Michelin-starred) Bell’s; and a brand-new Auberge Resorts Collection hotel.

It is, in other words, the California destination upon which I will now base my entire personality. And I largely blame Inn at Mattei’s Tavern, the new Auberge property, which I visited this past spring, shortly after its February 2023 opening.

The Inn at Mattei’s Tavern looks a bit like a Wes Anderson movie in that it is pristine, enchantingly symmetrical, and exudes a retro vibe (in this case, because the property was built in the 1880s). The guest houses are coated in a gleaming layer of white paint, with a red-shingled water tower sitting in the middle of the property. Next to that is a petite herb and flower garden and a wrought-iron greenhouse. In front of the water tower: a lush lawn speckled with Adirondack chairs, corn hole, and a fire pit, creating one of those vignettes that reminds you that summer never really ends in California.

On my first evening at Mattei’s, I crossed the lawn to The Tavern restaurant, my best friend and my dog by my side, sporting Los Olivos’ hottest accessory: a wool blanket neatly rolled, belted, and affixed to a leather shoulder strap that I carried on my arm in lieu of a purse. After a round of martinis and just-out-of-the-oven focaccia, we devoured clams served in a garlicky broth with a very enticing slab of pork belly. Then, we slipped down the hall to The Bar, where sommelier Ermoni Best poured a spicy, Santa Rita hills–sourced red blend. “They say this place is like Napa 50 years ago,” she told us as we paired the wine with chocolate soufflé doused in caramel sauce. “But it can’t be,” she added. “The wine is much lower intervention.”

The sun had set, the wine had set in, and the energy of Mattei’s started to unfold. We were sitting, by flickering tea candles, in the original tavern Felix Mattei opened in 1886, because the Pacific Coast Railroad would steam into town the following year. His wife, Lucy, was the chef, and there were seven rooms for rent upstairs. Mattei's Tavern was called the Central Hotel back then, but it had the same rich, chestnut wood paneling lining the bar walls. The leather chairs we sat on as we sipped and soufflé’d are new, but the adjacent welcome area — with a roaring fireplace and vases filled with dried flowers and eucalyptus — is the original stage office where Felix and Lucy checked in guests. It’s always been housed in a white building with columns and tangles of blooming wisteria. I’d like to think it's always had the slight whiff of mystery I felt that night, too.

These aren’t the only straight-from-the-1800s spaces on property. There are four historic cottages at the edge of the hotel’s grounds that Felix built in the 1910s. “We preserved their original wooden floors and front porches, while adding in luxurious features like spacious bathrooms and clawfoot tubs,” says Dave Elcon, general manager of The Inn at Mattei’s Tavern, about the work his team and design firm AvroKO did to “sensitively reimagine” the 110-year-old structures.

Those cottages are right on Nojoqui Avenue, a block-and-a-half from the main drag of Los Olivos. This isn’t a town where you have to drive hours to the wineries — the tasting rooms are within stumbling distance of Mattei’s 64 accommodations. One morning, we stopped in at the on-site Felix Feed & Coffee for breakfast burritos and cortados, enjoyed leisurely in the attached Wicker Room. After a sun-drenched brunch in the solarium-y space — which is elegantly decked out in wicker furniture, because that’s how Felix and Lucy decorated when they built this addition — we walked two short blocks to Stolpman Vineyards Fresh Garage and Dragonette Cellars’ tasting room. (Pro tip: hit the former for Stolpman’s new skin-contact releases, and the latter to stock up on Dragonette’s addictive coastal chardonnay.)

While you can live a very happy central California dream sequence within a two-block radius of the hotel, Mattei’s has a collection of tours to take you out into the neighboring Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Rita Hills. We tried the Meet the Maker tour, which the hotel curates exclusively with Coastal Concierge, to visit not tasting rooms, but gorgeous nearby vineyards with the winemakers and proprietors of some of the region’s most coveted wineries. We hung with John Dragonette, walking through his chardonnay vines in the Santa Rita Hills and tasting his entire pinot noir portfolio in the adjacent barn, with a spread of local cheeses. We sampled LaBarge Winery's crisp albariño with Pierre LaBarge as he explained why the Spain- and Portugal-favored grape does so well in the central Californian terroir.

If you can’t snag a Meet the Maker tour while visiting, Elcon has a few other favorite experiences on offer. “I love our Art of Uni class, which connects guests with a Santa Barbara uni diver to learn how to harvest, clean, open, and prepare uni. And, of course, Girls Gone Wine, which highlights some of the top female winemakers in the region,” he says.

One tempting approach to your Mattei's Tavern getaway, of course, is to not leave the property at all. Even the stumbling-distance tasting rooms feel far away when lazing at the pool, where The Shed serves light bites and refreshing iced tea. Similarly, when seated at the alfresco Gin’s Bar — named for Gin Lung Gin, the head chef at Mattei’s in the 1910s — noshing on duck wontons and grilled shiitakes and local wine on tap, it’s hard to will yourself to walk the 100 steps to Nojoqui Avenue.

Really, you can come to The Inn at Mattei’s Tavern and have a completely different experience from the person staying in the room next door. One of you could stay on property, do yoga in the morning, swim laps and sunbathe at the pool, have lunch at Gin’s, and spend the afternoon reading in the Wicker Room. The other might grab coffee at Felix Feed and spend the day hopping between tasting rooms in Los Olivos. For a resort that’s 6.5 acres, and a town that’s only 2.5 square miles, you can live a different life on any given day. You might even say this is the perfect place on which to stake your entire personality.

Rooms at The Inn at Mattei's Tavern, Auberge Resorts Collection, start at $950 a night, and you can book at aubergeresorts.com.

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