Touring Artisanal Shops in Old Town Temecula
During a recent press trip to Temecula Valley Wine Country (thanks to Temecula CVB and the Temecula Valley Winegrowers Association), we also got a little tour of Old Town Temecula's artisanal shops from an olive oil store, a lavender store, a sweets shop, and a spice and tea shop.
The bread they serve comes from Palm Springs. Drake's seems to be a favorite name for goat cheese, both plain and flavored, and for very good reason.
They also use Drake's for the goat cheese and kale frittata. The delicious local bacon from Cook Pigs Ranch in Julian.
By the way, E.A.T. is raising funds through Indiegogo to move to a new location and renovate due to some structural issues in their current kitchen, so please help them out or spread the word!
After breakfast we went to the olive oil store downstairs, where you can do a FREE olive oil and balsamic vinegar tasting anytime. The Temecula Olive Oil Company opened in 2001 and manages 125 acres of olive trees.
They have tons of flavored olive oils and balsamic vinegars from blood orange to hatch chile.
We then walked to the Temecula Lavender Company, who occasionally sets up their old school lavender oil extraction kit outside to attract customers. Beakers and copper stills!
Next was the Old Town Sweet Shop. They sell prepackaged sweets as well as by weight, house made fudges, and ice cream. The other notable sweets is their chocolate covered bacon, since they don't use small bacon bits but a whole piece of bacon!
We tasted some of the many flavors of fudges, but was too full to eat a lot and continued to the Old Town Spice Merchants. They had a lot of spices, teas, flavored salts and even dips. They had samples of the pumpkin dip out!
I hadn't been to Temecula in years and didn't do that much the first time around. I was pleasantly surprised at all the cute stores they had in Old Town Temecula. If and when you do go, make sure to stop by these stores, and especially to the olive oil store to get your free tasting!
1 comments:
How fun! I feel like when people think of Temecula, the first thing they think of is wine tasting (or if you're my aunt... Pechanga Casino.) I've never actually visited Old Town before, but it looks like it would make for a fun Sunday afternoon adventure :) Thanks for posting!
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