By Mary Richardson
High in the limestone foothills of the Santa Lucia Mountains, 20 wine glasses waited on tables shaded by ancient Coast Live Oaks at the Calcareous Vineyard. Five bottles of red wine rested nearby. Vineyards covered the slopes in every direction. It was time for a wine tasting!
Four of us were on a wine-tasting trip created by travel agent Anne Rose for herself, her husband Bill, me, and my husband Joe. It had come about after casual conversations over the years about Paso Robles, Calif. We had noticed that many of the wines we liked best were coming from there, but we knew nothing about the area. Napa gets plenty of attention, and so does Sonoma, but no one was talking about Paso Robles, or so we thought.
Turns out that was wrong. Wine experts are indeed lauding the region, and it no longer lives in Napa’s shadow. It has become one of California’s premier wine regions in its own right.
Unlike AVAs that specialize in one grape, these fields are full of Aglianico, Albarino, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Mourvedre, Petit Verdot, Petite Sirah, Primitivo, and Tannat grapes. It has eschewed luxury resorts and Michelin-starred restaurants. Instead, it has quietly developed a wine culture that many wine enthusiasts say feels more authentic, less crowded, more laid back, and more affordable than more famous regions. In our five days there, we found this to be true.
The biggest question was which wineries to visit, considering that we also wanted to hike in the foothills and explore the small town of Paso Robles. The dilemma wouldn’t have come up in the 1950s, when historians generally estimate there were fewer than 10 wineries in the area. By 1983, the year Paso Robles officially became an AVA, there were still only 20. But then little Paso Robles began transforming itself from a quiet agricultural area to a quiet, wine-producing area. Today, we were choosing between 250 wineries!
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We wondered how many tastings we could fit into five days. Most tastings are one-ounce pours of about five wines. Usually, facilities will let people share a tasting, with each person getting half the number of swallows. But swallows add up. We didn’t want to feel like napping. We wanted to hike! We wanted to explore! We wanted to eat at great local restaurants! We were going to have to find a way to reduce 250 choices down to six. Maybe seven. Well, eight tops.
What to do? Anne formerly worked at The Wine Store in Lake Charles and is was friends with the former owner of that establishment, Dr. Tom Strong. Dr. Strong is an advocate for Paso wines and has been there many times. She asked his advice, which we mostly followed.
We had flown into the small, efficient airport at San Luis Obispo, picked up our rental car, and started driving the 36 miles to Paso Robles. But everything had gone smoothly and we were early. We couldn’t check into our hotel for several hours. What should we do? Joe had read about an industrial area called Tin City that now housed several tasting rooms and it was on the way.
By chance again, we chose the ONX Winery tasting room. The wines were delicious (we found out later they have received several prestigious awards), but the best part was that we met Eric Colvard, the assistant tasting room manager. As he poured sips of a crisp rose made from 100 percent Tempranillo, he told us about the geography of the region and why Paso Robles was well-suited to growing grapes.
Paso Robles’ story, he said, begins beneath the ground, as the limestone soils formed when this land lay beneath an ancient sea. The story continues with the formation of the Santa Lucia Mountains and the all-important Templeton Gap which funnels cool Pacific air inland each afternoon. He told us about calcareous soils (hence the name of the winery mentioned at the beginning of this story – Calcareous) and onyx calcite (hence the name of this winery, ONX). Later in the week, these lessons were brought home at Turley Winery when we saw a Baleen whale bone that had come from one of their fields. It was a huge remnant from that ancient sea.
However, most of all, we learned about the “diurnal shift.” The “diurnal shift” is the difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures, and it is the single, defining reason the Paso area can produce excellent wines. The shift is visceral.
For us humans, it means that we were tasting wines in the daytime heat of 90 degrees (with low humidity), and then pulling on our jackets after dinner when the temperature dropped to 50 degrees. For the grapes, the shift means life. They can create their juicy sugars in the heat of the day, be refreshed at night by cool breezes, and start the new day reinvigorated, happy to ripen slowly and develop rich flavors. Without the diurnal shift, the grapes would wither on the vines.
We headed to Paso Robles. Driving down its one main street, we felt like we were entering a different decade. The town of about 31,000 people still has a Sinclair station ($6.09 for regular). We saw motor courts that looked ready for a 1950s movie set, neat and inviting. In the prominent Central Park, children were swinging and big families were eating together on picnic tables. No glass-and-steel buildings here; the town still has its old neon signs, brick buildings, independent hardware stores, a busy working garage, and family-owned businesses and restaurants – all in the center of town. It did not look “restored.” It looked like it had never declined.
It had changed, however, since its incorporation in 1889. In the 19th century, the “City of El Paso de Robles” was just a hot springs resort serving tourists who were riding the Southern Pacific Railroad. Then it became the “Almond Capital of the World.” Then came large-scale grain and cattle farming. Today, vineyards cover much of the countryside that once supported those cattle and grain fields. ONX Vineyard was central to that change. The ONX acreage had been a cattle ranch until ONX bought it in 2004. The owners planted grapes in 2005, and were among the very first people to do so in the area.
In the vibrant Central Square, Anne, Bill and Joe stopped cold at a huge statue of Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941). Why Paderewski? The town clearly considered him important; he is in the center of the square. Joe knew him as the Prime Minister of Poland during World War I, and Anne and Bill knew him because he was a famous pianist. I was the only one who had never heard of him.
The story is that Paderewski suffered from severe arthritis in his hands, quite disastrous for a pianist. In 1913, he came to what was then called the City of El Paso de Robles to soak in the famous hot sulfur springs. He was cured! He resumed performing … and bought a vineyard! Paderewski purchased more than 2,000 acres west of Paso Robles and named it Rancho San Ignacio, after his patron saint. His grapes were taken to the historic York Mountain Winery, where they were made into award-winning wines. In Paso Robles, everybody knows his name.
We fit hiking into each day. We mainly followed two trails – Three Bridges Oak Preserve and Stadium Park. Paso Robles translates as “The Pass of the Oaks,”fitting because we were walking through old forests of Live Oaks, Blue Oaks, and Valley Oaks. The park’s explanatory posters said the view hadn’t changed in 200 years. The abundance of California lace lichen hanging from the oaks confused us. It looked just like Louisiana’s Spanish moss, but lichen grows well without Louisiana’s humidity and indicates good air quality. We took deep breaths.
Our most spectacular hike was to the Pacific Ocean. We wanted to go through the Templeton Gap and feel the cool breezes that were making their way to refresh the Paso grapes, so we grabbed our jackets and headed to the tiny town of Cambria (population 6,000), located about 40 minutes away on Highway 1.
We almost missed Templeton Gap. I had been expecting something dramatic, something like the nail-biting Peachy Canyon Road we had traversed on the way to Calcareous Winery. That narrow road followed a limestone ridge with slopes so vertical that I couldn’t see the bottom. There were no shoulders, and I don’t remember guardrails (but I do remember the garbage truck we met on the narrowest section). Templeton Gap isn’t like that. It’s not a narrow canyon, but rather a broad, low opening in the Santa Lucia Range. Gently rounded hills were covered with golden wild oats and ryegrass. Every ravine sheltered Coast Live Oaks and dense chaparral, all deep green. It was bucolic.
And then the ocean was in front of us. We hiked the coastline at the West Fiscalini Ranch Preserve, a part of the 1,100-mile California Coastal Trail System, watching the blue ocean roll white, frothy waves right up to our feet. We felt the wind, and I imagined it continuing inland to the vineyards, where winemakers—still proudly describing themselves as farmers—were making the wines we would taste.
But what about the wine?
So many choices! Some were dark and luscious with rounded tannins. Some were bright and minerally. The tasting notes said we would experience “aromas of vanilla, strawberries, grapefruit, currants, boysenberries, plums, herbs, leather, blackberry jam, black cherries, white pepper, and black licorice” — and we did! Every winery offered something different, and everything was great!
Dr. Strong had steered us to eight wineries – J Lohr, Turley, Calcareous, Eberle, Six Mile Bridge, Austin Hope, and Barr. The cost for the tastings ranged from free (Eberle) to $125 for the four-hour tasting on top of the hillside at Calcareous. Most tastings were about $20, and that fee was usually waived with a purchase. Shipping costs varied. The best deal was ONX, which shipped for $1 if you bought a certain amount. Joe happened to be wearing his “Coast Guard Veteran” hat, and found to his surprise that many places had a military discount. At Eberle, it was 40 percent.
Each tasting was different, and each was memorable. We tasted Rhône-inspired blends at J Lohr. We were given jars of different types of soil to smell at Turley Wine Cellars and watched skilled forklift drivers rack barrels of wine into the storage area. We entered a cool wine cave at Eberle. We tasted Bordeaux-type blends at Six Mile Bridge and then had a picnic lunch in their natural grotto in Peachy Canyon. We experienced a vertical tasting at Austin Hope. At Barr Estate Winery, we were given a private tasting by owners Greg and Tealey Barr, native Louisianians. Each place was beautiful. Just impossibly beautiful.
We aren’t finished with Paso Robles. There are more forests to walk through. We need to find those sulphur hot springs. We need to get our feet wet in the ocean. And we need to learn more about the wines. We left 242 wineries unvisited. It may take a while.
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AUTHORS’ RECOMMENDATION: For a personal itinerary exploring the wineries, hotels, and restaurants of the Paso Robles region, contact Anne Rose at annerose@travelmation.net.
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