Fine Wine

Restaurateurs Doug Margerum and Mitchell Sjerven have sold their interest in the historic Santa Barbara eatery The Wine Cask.

Doug, also a noted winemaker, is also opening a new Margerum tasting room in the Hotel Californian next year, he tells me.

“It will be a spectacular space with 22-foot-high ceilings, a kitchen, heated patio, and mezzanine,” says Doug. “The existing reserve tasting room at El Paseo will continue to pour both Margerum and Barden wines until the new location is completed. After that, the El Paseo location will become exclusively the Barden tasting room.”

Doug owned and operated the Wine Cask for more than a quarter of a century, selling it 11 years ago to a Los Angeles restaurateur.

Mitch also owns the popular Victoria Street eatery Bouchon.

Flip Doesn’t Flop

Montecito TV talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres has just splashed out $15 million on a Beverly Hills Regency-style estate.

The 60-year-old Oscars host, who sold her former John Saladino house, Villa di Lemma, for $34 million in July, has made quite a fortune as a serial flipper of real estate over the years.

Her new 5-bedroom, 4.5-bathroom home was built in 1962 and designed by architect to the stars, John Elgin Woolf, and was formerly home to actress-philanthropist Marjorie Lord, before being sold for $8.3 million after her death in 2015.

The single-story 5,100-sq.-ft. property, which was updated by Los Angeles design firm Marmol Radziner, has floor-to-ceiling windows in nearly every room taking in the city to ocean views.