During the summer, at the Taste of the Town fundraising event, I bid on a tour of the J. Lohr Winery in Paso Robles. I ended up with the winning bid and was very happy as J. Lohr is hands down my favorite wine. We were able to go on this trip with our wine tasting buddies, the Webers.
Now for the bad news. I had close to 100 pictures of this trip that were on both my phone and backed up to my cloud. Somehow, when I was trying to download them to my computer, almost all of them disappeared. That means one of three things happened: Either the Russians hacked my accounts and deleted the pictures to prevent me from spreading the joy of the Paso Robles wine country; or some rogue Napa Valley wine group put a virus on my phone when we were visiting there, and the virus deleted the pictures so people will only know about the Napa Valley and not Paso Robles; or there was some sort of user error. My money is on the Russians doing it. Anyway………………
We left early on a Friday and made it to the J. Lohr Winery before our noon tour time. We were able to do some wine tasting before our tour. Here we are at our wine tasting and some pictures of the vineyards. This is one of only five surviving pictures.
After tasting some really delicious wines, we were off on our tour. The tour started at the vineyard where we got to taste some of the grapes. They were a combination of sweet and tart and tasted nothing like wine. Here is Cindy with the Webers and the vineyards. The vests were needed since we were touring a working winery.
The tour was very interesting and informative. We were able to see how the grapes are mechanically removed from the bunches, the process where the grape juice is turned into wine, and got to taste several wines right out of the barrel. I had some really cool pictures of all of this until the darn commies deleted my stuff. Needless to say, we had a really good time and enjoyed some great wine.
Our next stop was the Eberle Winery. There are several good reasons to visit this winery. Doing the free wine tasting is not one of them. First off, the location is very dog friendly. There are two standard poodles that belong to the owners and the dogs stroll and lounge around the winery. If you feed them one of the small crackers used to cleanse your palate, the dogs let you pet them. The location is very scenic. Here are Cindy and I on the patio overlooking one of the vineyards. The white boxes are what they use to get the grapes from the vineyards into the processing facility.
And they give free “Cave Tours.” The “Cave” is an underground area built by the owners to store their wine in barrels while the wine ages. Here are a few pictures of the “Cave” area. These are also the last pictures I was able to recover.
Also, the staff at Eberle is very friendly and helpful. As for the wines they include in the free tasting……………..They are not so very good. Maybe if we had tried the paid wine tasting they would have been better. Still worth the stop.
We went to our hotel, checked in and freshened up, and had dinner in the downtown area at the Black Cat Bistro Too. The food was really good and I highly recommend eating there when you are in the area. After our meal, Todd was bent on going to a nearby speakeasy named, “Eleven Twenty-two.” So we walked a few blocks and had to wait in a short line to get in. Once we were inside (we only had to wait about 10 minutes), the inside was very small and decorated like it was the 1920’s and the bartenders were also dressed like the time period. The bartenders were also very into making their drinks, and the were delicious. Visiting the speakeasy turned out to be a fun experience that we really enjoyed.
The next day we started our wine tasting at DAOU winery. DAOU is located on top of a hill and had 360 degree views of the surrounding countryside. The scenery was simply amazing. We were able to wine taste at the winemakers private table (that’s what they told us and I believed them). The wines there were only average. My guess is the beautiful setting and amazing views sell way more wines than the flavor. All that being said, this is still a must see when in the Paso Robles area.
Our next stop was at Mt. Olive Organic Farm for some olive, olive oil, and tapenade tasting. Almost everything we tasted was very good. We all made some purchases and were on our way again. The next stop was at Re:Find Distillery for some wine and vodka tasting. While the wines were only average, the vodkas were outstanding. Yes, we left with some delicious vodka.
We had lunch at a sandwich shop in the downtown area, walked and shopped a bit, then headed off to the Robert Hall Winery for our last tasting of the day. The wines at Robert Hall are very good and I would recommend a stop there. We went back to the hotel to freshen up for dinner.
We had asked several locals for a recommendation for a really good steakhouse. The consensus was the Loading Chute Restaurant and Barn in nearby Creston. So were were off to this out of the way restaurant. This was clearly a locals type place and the food was outstanding. A must stop for dinner.
The next day we were all back on the road headed home. But first we had to stop at Roblar Winery in Santa Ynez to pick up the Webers’ wine shipment and do some more wine tasting. As usual, the wines were outstanding.
We had lunch at the El Rancho Market in Solvang and headed home.
Our next trip is to the New England area for a two week tour to see the famous fall foliage.