Harvest Festival Friday - Wining our way through new tasting rooms and old favorites
Festival Weekends tend to be at their most crowded on Saturday. A good plan, and one we chose to follow this weekend and have also enjoyed ignoring on other festival weekends, is to do most of your exploring on Friday and then just kick it at a handful of winery events on Saturday. On Friday morning, fortified with breakfast, Mortgaged and I set off up Vineyard Drive and out Peachy Canyon Road for the exploratory wine tasting component of our Harvest Festival adventure.
Our first stop was Jada, a winery we enjoy that is owned by a heart surgeon. His wines are all blends, all delicious, and all have names relating to his Italian American childhood in Hell’s Kitchen or to puns on his profession. Jada is a fun example of a non family run, more Napa style tasting room but with a Paso tasting fee that includes cheese pairings with the wine - an inspired choice, in my opinion, as I always find a cheese I really like there as well. This trip’s discovery? Cream cheese stuffed dried apricots. So yummy! We were hoping to buy some of his Jack of Hearts but the new vintage won’t be released until spring. Oh well...onward up vineyard drive.
Opolo was tasty as always, even though I have never been able to convince them to sell me wine club only tempranillo since that one delicious bottle three years ago...*sigh*. Their tasting room always gives the impression of a bunch of neighbors chatting on the porch and it's nice to be included in their fun. We like the mountain zinfandel which is more berry than spice and the true pinot noir they make that has hints of strawberry and rhubarb. This is a true pinot noir in the sense that it is a light wine as suitable for salmon as for steak, with a color somewhere between a red and a rose. Many wineries add a little bit of syrah or cab to darken the color and make the flavors richer, which can be tasty, but it's nice to find a true pinot noir every now and then.
Oso Libre was a find and a half! The winemaker's daughter in law and a family friend were manning the tasting room while the winemaker bustled in and out as he set up for their Saturday festivities, stopping every now and then to fuss over us and make sure we were happy. Nice people all around, and the family friend appreciated Mortgaged's sense of humor, always a plus. We liked everything we tasted and especially loved the sauvignon blanc which has a strong pear nose, the 2008 Osezno Zinfandel (dry, spicy, peppery and tannic), and the 2008 Nativo Primitivo (I. Love. Primitivo! This one is rich currents, plums and berries but not overly sweet). Afterward, we enjoyed glasses of cabernet and zinfandel on their lovely patio with pita bites, cheese and gourmet chocolate, amidst all kinds of cute begging from Patron and Ruby, two very friendly winery dogs.
Villa Creek was an impulse stop. The wine was very good, in some cases excellent. But the bottle price was high and they don't waive the tasting fee when you buy (or tell you this until they ring you up) causing me to remark: That's very unusual for Paso. And when she gave me a blank look: How very Napa of you. That remark she understood, but I tend to think that’s actually what they’re going for, which is fine, just not to my taste. While I certainly wouldn't turn down a glass of Villa Creek in the future (especially of one of their mourvedre blends, yum!), and we did have a good time tasting here, with so many more Paso tasting rooms to visit, I doubt we’ll be back.
Minassian-Young was another impulse stop. We had enjoyed their wines at several festivals but never been to the tasting room. Brilliant idea Mortgaged! We had the best time, thoroughly enjoyed the wine and the bottle price is awesome! N, the tasting room master, is D from Applebee’s doppelganger. It started off with him handing us a wine glass from the dishwasher that had a fingerprint on it which lead to all kinds of jokes about how this might have occurred and how he might give annoying customers the “special” glass from now on - hmmm, all of the wines taste kind of lotion-y today! Hilarious…and it went happily downhill from there. As far as the wine goes, Mortgaged and I are considering rearranging our memberships to become members here…besides apparently N cancel our other memberships for us ;) We especially enjoyed, the Black Saint Peter (which we found out is an old “marketing” term used to sell zinfandel grapes to 1800’s European immigrant winemakers who had already turned zinfandel down - Minassian-Young is takin’ it back!), a zinfandel, mourvedre, petite sirah, carignon and viognier blend with an amazing strawberry, current and brandied cherries taste to it, the GSMV, a grenache, syrah, mourvedre and viognier blend that is rich and lovely, and the White Rhonoceros (get it, Rhone-oceros, he he), a light, refreshing Rhone blend with apple, pineapple and citrus notes. They also have an excellent tempranillo and a tasty malbec.
Calcareous, on the other hand was on the list and had been for quite some time. We just don’t get out Peachy Canyon Road very often and will have to remedy that in the future. Named for the thick limestone veins that cut through the soil in this section of west side Paso Robles, Calcareous vineyards has easily one of the best views in Paso. Seriously, Croad should be jealous and that’s really saying something. On our next visit, I hope to take a glass of wine out to their patio and drink in the view for a while. Theirs is a larger tasting room but warm and friendly, even to nonmembers as crowds of wine club members were beginning to pour in for the wine club event that evening. Our favorites were the pinot noir and the 2007 Tres Violet, a blend of syrah, grenache and mourvedre that has hints of black plum, black raspberry, honey and nutmeg.
Stacked Stone is another vineyard we’d been meaning to visit for some time. The tasting room and winemaker/winery owner’s home are located in a large clearing in the woods at the eastern end of Peachy Canyon Road. For Harvest Festival they had a complimentary barbeque of locally produced sausages on the grounds. The owner is quite a woodworker and mason - impressive work room! - and helped build the winery’s namesake stacked stone walls. They were friendly and fun. Somehow we got on the subject of mortgages and enjoyed a lively discussion on the topic. Wine wise, Mortgaged and I enjoyed the Gem and Quarry blends - well balanced Rhone blends and Bordeaux blends respectively.
For dinner, we attended Barrel 27’s pick up party. We are not members but they graciously extended the invitation to non members…and then only charged us the member fee. Also, we have only been in the tasting room three times now, but N, the tasting room mistress extraordinaire, started writing our names on her guest check in list the second we walked through the door. Talk about hospitality! This pick up party was all about the Barrel 27 label instead of the two individual winemakers’ labels so there was one table of all the current releases and another of the wines about to be released. I have to say, the wines were great and are only improving. I wish the El Hombre Syrah did not have such an impressive bottle price, though I understand and believe it can command this price. It is excellent - rich, currants, blackberries and lots of pepper - and not something they ever have in the tasting room, so I feel lucky to have gotten a taste. What more can I say about their wine? We have some of every bottle in our wine cellar and this is another winery we’re considering rearranging our memberships for. As for the party, it was fantastic. We met some really nice people, had several conversations with N and the wine makers, and enjoyed fantastic tacos al pastor from the Los Robles Café. Tacos al pastor with pineapple, roasted onions and a spicy guacamole salsa…I don’t know how authentic they were, but they were seriously delicious.
Suffice to say, we had a wonderful day, met several nice people, enjoyed all kinds of delicious wine and decadent food and made a lot of memories. And the best part? This was just Friday! I will report on our Saturday adventures in another post.