IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT CAB; A great wine is a great excuse for a road trip.(NEWS)

Byline: DON KLEIN

iF TOURING WINE country in a drop-top German sports car is your idea of fun, there's a good chance your favorite homonym is "cab. This is especially so if the car is a fully optioned 2009 Mercedes-Benz SL550, and the wine country has winding roads and excellent undiscovered cabernet sauvignons.

California's Santa Ynez Valley, the setting for the film Sideways, is just such a place. Located about 25 miles inland from Santa Barbara, this fertile region is home to more than 100 wineries, most with tasting rooms, linked by some of the finest driving roads in America. This may produce a frustrating dilemma: How to experience it all without getting too schnockered to drive?

We could have opted for a designated driver, but no way were we going to give up the keys to that Benz. So we went with Plan B: Tour by day, sample by night. This decision was enthusiastically endorsed by the Santa Ynez Valley Visitors Association, the California Highway Patrol and the editors of your favorite car magazine. The sampling part was facilitated by the numerous in-town tasting rooms. Many are owned by individual wineries, but it's still the best way to compare before you buy.

You don't need to be an oenophile to enjoy this trip. Even if you can't tell a "63 Grand Cru from a "63 Grand Prix, the Santa Ynez Valley is a road-tripper's mecca. The jewel in the valley's crown is Solvang, a tidy Scandinavian-inspired village that makes you feel right as if you're in Denmark (or Epcot Center). Yet just a few miles down the road is Santa Ynez, an old western town that feels authentic because it is. You will also want to see Buellton, Los Olivos, Ballard, Chumash and Santa Maria.

For pure driving pleasure, the best loop we found starts on Foxen Canyon Road just outside Los Olivos, heads north over the Sisquoc River, winds its way up (and down) Tepusquet Road until it meets Route 66, then dives back to Santa Maria. Even with the SL's g-force-defying Active Body Control, we whitened our knuckles a few times. And yes, we know that the car is technically a retractable hardtop, not a cabriolet, but that didn't spoil our "cab fun.

IF YOU GO