More than 75 restaurants, wineries, breweries, distilleries and specialty food purveyors participated in the 12th annual Taste of Rancho Santa Fe at The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe on Sunday. The Rotary-run tasting event was a major fundraiser for the Rancho Santa Fe Rotary Foundation. Food and beverage lovers turned out for the showcase, which raised money for the foundation.
The event was presented by the Rancho Santa Fe Rotary Club, according to a news release reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune. The club partnered with Hoehn Motors, the Morrison Foerster Foundation, The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe, and Ranch & Coast Magazine to pull off the tasting, per the same report. Net proceeds are earmarked for charitable programs benefiting veterans, children, seniors, and people facing hardship throughout the community, the release states.
The Taste of Rancho Santa Fe is an annual community fundraiser. Over more than a decade, the tasting has grown into a fixture on the village's social calendar, one that channels casual sipping and snacking into hard grant dollars for local causes.
A Historic Inn Sets the Scene
The setting itself carries plenty of history. The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe was originally designed in the 1920s as the La Morada guesthouse by Lilian Rice, the tenth woman in California to earn an architectural license, according to San Diego Magazine. Her Spanish Colonial Revival style still defines the visual character of Rancho Santa Fe a century later.
The property changed hands in a big way in August 2023, when Chicago-based GEM Realty Capital acquired The Inn for $100 million while a $50 million property-wide renovation was still ongoing, according to Raquel Benguiat Realtor. That overhaul brought the resort back with 85 accommodations comprising suites, bungalows and residences, plus two new dining concepts: Lilian's, named for the architect, and Bing's Bar, named for actor Bing Crosby, who hosted a golf tournament at the Rancho Santa Fe Country Club, according to Hospitality Design.
From Tasting Tickets to Fire Engines
What sets Taste of Rancho Santa Fe apart from a typical food festival is where the money lands. Proceeds support the fundraising efforts of the Rancho Santa Fe Rotary Foundation, a nonprofit and a major beneficiary of the event. The foundation has recently partnered with the Rancho Santa Fe Foundation on a joint $20,000 grant, split into two $10,000 matching contributions, to equip new fire engines for the Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District Foundation, according to Ranch & Coast Magazine.
The foundation has also directed money toward youth arts education, including an $8,000 matching grant to the San Diego Musical Theatre Academy that was matched through student performance fundraisers, according to the San Diego Musical Theatre. Those two grants illustrate the range of the Rotary Foundation's reach, stretching from public safety equipment to arts programming for young performers.
A Club With Deep Local Roots
The Rancho Santa Fe Rotary Foundation was formed in 1959.
Beyond grantmaking, club members put in direct volunteer hours too, including preparing and serving hundreds of meals at the San Diego Ronald McDonald House for families of hospitalized children, according to the Rotary Club of Rancho Santa Fe. It's a reminder that the tasting event, glossy as it is, sits alongside more hands-on service work the club does year-round.
Wine and Local Giving
Taste of Rancho Santa Fe proceeds support charitable programs benefiting veterans, children, seniors and people facing hardship throughout the community. The event links an afternoon of tastings with local charitable causes.
The tasting also arrives amid a broader wave of high-end investment reshaping the village, from the multimillion-dollar transformation of the old Morgan Run into the La Valle Coastal Club to the Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club's clubhouse renovation, both covered in earlier Hoodline reporting. Taken together, the pattern shows a community where luxury hospitality dollars and grassroots philanthropy increasingly flow through the same channels.
