3 day trip to Paso Robles wine country
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| Epoch Winery |
We decide to stay at Paso Robles Inn this time as I wanted to live downtown Paso to enjoy the convenient of walking to places for this trip.
Paso Inn has a nice patio area that we really enjoyed on top of having regular hotel amenities so that worked out really well for this trip. They are sold out for the weeekend due to the Pioneer parade so we were lucky to book early enough to get the room
They also have a wine tasting event at Piccolo Hotel @ the Piper. The wines are not very good except for the white which is decent.
However, Jennifer who worked that weekend is super nice and had some fun chats with her. First is we had no idea it's the Pioneer day parade on Sat. And she told us to expect some antique tractors and free beans giveaway and downtown being closed.
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| The piper pouring the Thatcher wine all weekend |
She also recommended Bushuong across the street and we liked the wine enough to sign up with them too. They only have a tasting room downtown. But the owner likes to collect records, record players, amplifiers. Jason did our tasting and he's super nice and cool too. Tannat was a new grape to me and they do a single varietal that's outstanding.
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| Bushong tasting room which is very cool |
We grab a quick dinner @ the Hatch as it's travel day and we are both pretty tired. The Hatch is an interesting place. Michelin guide and they are famous for rotisserie chicken and cool cocktails. We shared their half chicken with an excellent cornbread.
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| Dinner at the Hatch |
We woke up bright and early the next morning and checked out the parade.
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| Bean cooking in the AM for distribution at lunch |
There are some cool antique tractors that's very impressive
After watching the parade till 1030am, we have to leave to drink wine =)
First stop Turley
Turley been on my radar but not enough to sign for their wine club. They do a lot of zinfandels and that day the tasting was done with Juvenile zin (which is 50 years old vine), and a J Dusi paper street Zinfandel that they made into their zin. They also have a Amadeus Zinfandel and Presenti Zin. Presenti is the current winery location where they bought the winery with the old vines Zin.
My impression is Juvenile is the right price tag at $24 for a casual drinking. I really think J Dusi Zin has potential to age well so got that to keep for a couple of years to see where it goes.
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| Turley tasting room |
2nd stop Fratelli Perata
There's a casual Italian food to go with about 8 wines tasting at Fratelli. Pretty nice low key event that we really enjoyed and collected our wine
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| Fratelli Perata wine collection party |
After the party we head back to the hotel and walked around downtown and drank more wine at Bushong before we called it a night.
The next day will be a big drinking day. So we went to Joe's place for breakfast and we enjoyed that
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| Joe's place famous biscuit and gravy, with interesting Ranchero sauce |
3rd winery Epoch
Epoch is the high end winery for the trip. It's a little over the top (tasting by appointment only, locked gate, greeted by a glass of Rose by your server at the door, flight of wine all poured and ready to go and a can of complimentary water to go).. and u pay for it too =) $40 per tasting!
Unfortunately we didn't enjoy the red wines there. To my palette the wine does not have enough sweetness and seems astringent and not enjoyable. Their white wine ironically is very good but it's not part of the wine tasting and has to be requested after the red wine tasting. Also the bottles are too pricy.
4th stop Linne Calado
This is a fun winery. Their kitten Francisco was sleeping beside our tasting settee for almost the whole time. They have 2 dogs running around. Reminded us of the wineries in the valley.
They are also tasting by appointment only and their wine is better than Epoch. Unfortunately their bottle start at $90 and just can't justify it. But we will go back for tasting as they are fun.
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| Francisco cat with our tasting |
5th stop J Dusi
This winery is a return for us. Their winemaker Janelle made an impression last year when we tried her Paper street series. So want to see what's her release this year.
It turns out they are doing an event to match the release of Turley's J Dusi Zin, by Janelle debuting her own version of J Dusi Zin too. So we had fun trying snacks and trying that zin. And we did buy a bottle of that as it would be fun to try it with the Turley together.
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| J Dusi wine tasting with Janelle's mum snack of Polenta and wrapped chorizo |
After this we are pretty much done with winery tasting. Went back to the hotel and ate dinner at Il Cortile which is my favorite Italian place in Paso. They have a truffle risotto that is to die for. And everything is always well executed with homemade pasta, authentic Italian ingredients and good service.
