Cambria, wine, hospitality, oh my!
Mortgaged and I drove up to Cambria late Thursday night, braving some pretty intense fog, and the ever present danger of radio attacks by rogue mariachi bands as the reception ebbed and flowed and a shifting stream of radio stations paraded across the broadcast frequencies all the way up the 101. We arrived a little after 1am with the practical taste of late night Santa Maria mini-mart coffee still on our lips. I really can’t think of anything to recommend such coffee other than that it fulfills an immediate need for caffeine at an inconvenient time, so my mind had dubbed that taste of overly charred low quality beans with the stale acid of sitting on the warmer for too many hours, practical. However, waking up already in Cambria this morning, with salt from the sea mingling with thick tendrils of fog in the crisp morning air, was well worth the trek.
The hospitality of the central coast is always so refreshing. I am sure there are jerks and other annoying personalities here but if we have ever met them, they didn’t make much of an impression because I do not remember it. We met a number of nice people on the wine tasting trail today, including a group ladies from, as they put it, the tropical paradise of Birmingham, Alabama, on what seemed like the most fun girls’ weekend ever, who were just lovely to talk to.
We made it to Barrel 27 where they had graciously held 4 bottles of the sold out dry rose waiting for me for two weeks, without my credit card information. It’s delicious. They are appreciative that I like it and I asked nicely, so they just held it for me until Mortgaged and I could come up. That’s how nice they are - and they are OMG talented. There isn’t a wine here we don’t like. They were bottling today so all the winemakers were on hand, tired as could be but still seemingly happy to spend time in the tasting room with the customers and tell us great stories.
We stopped by PasoPort/Steinbeck as well. They were in the middle of bottling too and the wife of the husband/wife team that own and operate the winery was the tasting room hostess for the day. We had a really interesting conversation with her about how the bottling was going and how difficult it can be to decide when to stop tweaking the latest blend and just let it be. That sounds like an art form unto itself. She was an excellent hostess, gave us a lot of new information, and told several fantastic stories about the business. And, the wine was fantastic as usually.
After that we tried a new place - Malloy O’Neill - and found more good wine and excellent hospitality. Malloy O’Neill is one of the vineyards that will only taste part of their selection on any given day, but he very kindly opened a few extra bottles for us (and the Alabama ladies) because he was so pleased we knew of and appreciated Aglianico grapes and he wanted to show off a few blends that feature them. Oddly enough, this Irish family has a tie to Italian wine makers through the wine maker’s mother’s side of the family so they do a lot with Italian varietals. This means that Seth and I will be back frequently. We love what happens when winemakers grown Italian grapes in Paso Robles. We also enjoyed visits to Chronic Cellars - mmmmm, purple paradise - and Farmstand 46 - mmmmm, roasted pork sandwich with pickled red onions.
This evening, Mortgaged and I headed to the West End Bar and Grill for a delicious fish and chips and the Angels game. Now the bar owner, as you may or may not remember from previous posts, is a die-hard Giants fan, as are many in these parts. The Dodgers were playing the Giants this evening as well, so we fully planned on enjoying the Dodgers/Giants game instead if all three TVs in the bar were already tuned in to it. But no, the owner was his usual congenial self, kind of remembered us from before and, after teasing us again about his remaining hard feelings over the 2002 World Series, let us have one of the TVs over the bar. He then turned the other TV over the bar to the Giants/Dodgers game and we got to watch them side by side.
The rest of the evening’s crowd was primarily tourists with little interest in any sporting event, so he came over to chat with Mortgaged and I a lot about both games, the Angels and Giants in general, beer, and a number of other things. As things were winding down and the kitchen closed, he brought his own dinner out to the bar (Note to self, the owner eats the house chili for dinner. I must try this next time.) and settled down for a few innings with us. Sadly for all, neither team did very well (though the Giants did better than the Angels - we were just bad, bad, bad - and I do like to see the Dodgers win when they aren’t playing us) but it was an extremely hospitable and a lovely evening.