PASO ROBLES POURS a fine wine
In 20 years, the industry exploded in the area south of the Napa Valley
I magine the Napa Valley with fewer tourists clogging the tasting rooms, cheaper hotels and a lot less pretension. Then get in a car, drive four hours south from Napa and start your California wine tour in Paso Robles.
This l i ttle city halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles has become the epicentre of a wine region that has exploded in size over the past two decades, from 35 wineries in the mid-1990s to more than 300 today.
With that growth has come accolades and recognition, including the area’s designation in 2013 as wine region of the year by Wine Enthusiast magazine. Yet, a lot of grape-loving tourists never make it south of Napa and Sonoma.
If they do, they might be pleasantly surprised. Paso Robles is an unpretentious city of about 30,000 best known for its olive groves and hot springs, in addition to its vineyards.
A 2003 earthquake heavily damaged many buildings and turned a parking lot near city hall into a giant sinkhole, thanks to the natural hot springs that ran beneath it. But since then, the sinkhole has been filled in and the city’s historic downtown has been restored to its former quaint charm.
It’s the ideal place to base yourself for a few days of exploring the wine country. Within a few blocks of the attractive park that anchors the downtown core are more than two dozen restaurants. And you know what that means — you don’t have to worry about how many glasses of local wine you have with your meal because you can commute back to your hotel on foot.
During the day, you can either enjoy a self- guided tour by rental car or let someone else do the driving by booking a spot with a local tour company.
I thought it made sense to start at Justin, one of the wineries that started the area’s winemaking explosion. A halfhour drive from downtown Paso Robles, Justin’s contemporary tasting room — one of only a few in the wine region with an adjoining restaurant — is nestled in a landscape of rolling green hills.
Although grapes have been grown for wine in the Paso Robles area since the 1800s, when they were planted by missionaries and European immigrants, there were fewer than a dozen commercial wineries in the area when Justin Baldwin bought 160 acres (65 hectares) of raw land to start a winery. Until then, the area had been known mostly for Zinfandels, but Baldwin decided soil conditions were ideal to grow Bordeaux-style reds — Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
Justin has since branched out into Chardonnays, Viogniers and Sauvignon Blancs, but its red wines are its star attractions. Isosceles, its signature Médoc-style red blend, started racking up awards in the 1990s and suddenly, both wine lovers and winemakers started paying attention to the Paso Robles area.
The viticulture boom that started in the 1990s proved fertile ground for Neil Collins, a British-born chef who decided to switch gears and become a winemaker. After learning the craft hands- on at two other local wineries and training in France, he became winemaker at Tablas Creek.
He’s still there, but in 1996 he started his own wine label, Lone Madrone. In its cosy tasting room, you can try an impressive variety of white and red blends, but it was the 2010 Syrah that earned a coveted spot in my suitcase for the trip home.
The owners of ONX and Niner Estates also saw the area’s promise as a grape- growing region within the last dozen years or so. Steve and Brenda Olson are land developers with a passion for wine who bought 120 acres (48 hectares) of land in 2004 to start ONX and has half of it planted with a variety of Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian grapes.
At Niner Wine Estates, Andy Niner took over the operation of the winery his father Richard founded in 1996 and now oversees three vineyards that take advantage of different microclimates in the region.
You can sample Niner’s wines in its airy tasting room or, better yet, with wine pairings and resident chef Maegen Loring’s inventive cuisine, which includes house-made Toulouse sausage and roasted cauliflower salad with tangerine and dates. At the end of the meal, don’t miss a taste of Doce Nove, a port-style Syrah that will banish any negative thoughts you might harbour about overly sweet dessert wines.
A recent addition is Pelletiere Estate, opened in early 2015 by an all-female team that includes owner Janis Denner, winemaker Amy Butler and vineyard manager Mindy Allen. Denner’s passion for wines is a family affair — in addition to her Italian heritage, in which wine and food were pivotal, her husband Andy runs Denner Vineyards about six kilometres away.
Like Justin Baldwin, Bob and Jo-Ann Dunning are veterans of the local wine industry. JoAnn was in corporate banking and Bob was a musician when they founded Dunning Vineyards 22 years ago.
“We came here as enthusiasts,” Bob Dunning says. “This was a place where you could come and be a pioneer.”
They have since won accolades for their Chardonnays, Pinot Noirs, Zinfandels and Cabernet Sauvignons.
New and veteran vineyard owners in the area have had to learn to adapt to the severe drought conditions in recent years by using dry farming techniques, which reduce the need for irrigation. Local wildlife is another challenge — deer, ground squirrels and wild boar roam the hills and can decimate a crop in short order. But the latter is also a sign of how pastoral the area still is; you’re unlikely to have to brake for a wild boar in the Napa Valley, as I did one day in the wine country outside Paso Robles.
If your palate temporarily wearies of tasting wine, stop in at Pasolivo, one of a few olive oil producers in the area. There, you can get a tour of their olive press and sample straight-from-the- tree oils enhanced with natural flavours like lime, tangerine, basil and rosemary.
Good wine and good food go hand in hand, and Paso Robles’ restaurants won’t disappoint. Try the fresh and inventive salads at Thomas Hill Organics, the wood-fired pizzas at Artisan and the California- style Mexican cuisine at Fish Gaucho — all three restaurants are in the city’s downtown core.
You can also lounge in the area’s hot springs, check out the downtown public market on Tuesdays or rent a bike to explore the local countryside.
But who are we kidding? The wine is deservedly the star attraction in Paso Robles. Watch out, Napa, you’ve got competition.