Larry I truly don’t know how much advertising is going to convince folks to make that journey and essentially give up two days or more for a visit. If they’re day tripping to Temecula it’s because they can get there and back same day. I lived adjacent to Temecula for around 24 years, SW Riverside County has been one of the fastest growing areas in the entire country.
Maybe Paso is getting a good share of visitors, I don’t know their numbers. They’ve got a few very large well known and distributed producers. Josh and Daou do huge numbers. Paso also has hotels right in the city whereas SBC wineries are spread out. Temecula wineries are essentially up one main road.
We live in the East Bay, around 35 miles from Downtown San Francisco, and it used to take us around two hours to get to the Amador Tasting room. A bit over 100 miles. We enjoyed going up there but it was a full day!
Amador,Lodi and El Dorado draw visitors from Sacramento etc.
As Ed S says, for people around SF it’s a long day.
Then again, traffic to Napa and Sonoma can be really bad. Wineries north of St Helena and Healdsburg complain about people not wanting to drive so much.
Livermore gets a lot of people who don’t want to drive far.
About Santa Barbara: I remember when Firestone was the big name there and many thought it was in Napa. One would think Sideways gave the region some identity but that’s long ago.
The thing about wine is it seems new regions pop up every day. I see articles about Georgia and Armenia,Poland, German Pinot, English sparklers, etc.
A region just has to keep pushing.
SBC offers great wines in a variety of styles and prices. Just keep promoting.
The late Dave Lett of Eyrie once quoted a German wine saying two him: getting wineries and winemakers to work together is like pitchforking garter snakes.
One thing the area around Buellton has is a wide range of hotels and motels, some of which are not expensive. If you want anything under $200/night in Napa, there’s not much.