The Foxen Canyon Wine Trail and a Sea Captain's Anchor

Heading northwest out of Los Olivos, a country road climbs through oak-studded hills into some of the most scenic vineyard country in California. This is the Foxen Canyon Wine Trail, a winding route that links Los Olivos to Santa Maria and gathers many wineries and tasting rooms along the way. The canyon takes its name from an English sea captain, William Benjamin Foxen, who came ashore at Santa Barbara in the early eighteen hundreds and later acquired the Rancho Tinaquaic, a Mexican land grant of nearly nine thousand acres first granted in eighteen thirty-seven that covered much of what is now Foxen Canyon.

Captain Foxen branded his cattle with a distinctive anchor mark, a nod to his seafaring past, and that anchor still appears today on the labels of Foxen Winery, founded in nineteen eighty-five by his descendant Dick Dore and partner Bill Wathen. The trail passes other well-known names too, including Firestone and the winery started by the actor Fess Parker, who played Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone before becoming a valley vintner. It is a drive through both landscape and lineage, where nineteenth-century ranching and modern winemaking share the same dusty road.