Don’t Pass By Paso Robles

Kelly Jordan of the Smoke Rise area of Stone Mountain, Ga., recently asked about recreating a Napa Valley trip she took some 20 years ago, when she was barely out of college. She recalled tasting deliciously unique wines, meeting winemakers and learning a lot about wine while soaking in the beauty of this pastoral valley.

My suggestion to her, if she truly wanted a replay of that journey, was to consider another wine region.

“Napa ain’t what it used to be,” I told her as we watched our Smoke Rise Sharks Dive Team take on the Gators of Dunwoody. (We lost.) “Don’t get me wrong. It’s still a slice of heaven on earth. And there still is plenty of wine…more, in fact. But there are also balloon rides, destination dining, cooking schools, tour busses, limousines, gift shops, dining trains, $1,200-a-day spas featuring the curative powers of grape pomace wraps and more tour busses.”

Napa is not all about the wine these days. There is more winemaking going on in the 30-mile-long valley (300-plus wineries), but much of it is made in such small quantities that it remains off-limits to regular folks. More wineries have sprung up, but they have more in common with Persian palaces and seem to have taken their focus off what’s going in the bottle. Warm, unique and interesting destinations remain (such as Provenance and Miner Family), but can be frustratingly inaccessible due to traffic.

A little over a year ago, I visited Paso Robles, the picturesque town and wine region located 250 miles south of Napa. I rolled out of my $95-per-night room at the Paso Robles Inn at 8 a.m., ate my corned beef hash and eggs at the inn’s coffee shop and made it to my appointment at Peachy Canyon (about five miles away) by nine o’clock. Finding a cheap room, simple food and getting to your destination on time is the stuff of Napa Valley lore.

At 11:15 I rolled into Justin Vineyards to meet owners Justin and Deborah Baldwin. I was a little late, but not because of the impossible traffic on Chimney Rock Road, but because of my own directional impairments. Justin’s wines, including its flagship Isosceles red wine, are every bit as good as many of the Napa stars (and almost as expensive). But in Paso, you’ll have the chance to actually get a taste of it before you plunk down $62 for a bottle. And if Paso Robles had a destination dining spot, Justin’s Deborah’s Room might be it. The six-table restaurant features locally grown produce cooked with American, French and Asian inspirations. There is no restaurant like Napa’s French Laundry in Paso Robles, but then again, you don’t have to make reservations a month in advance either.

And of course, it’s always nice to meet the proprietors when you visit a winery—not always possible in Napa Valley since many winery owners live in San Francisco, Chicago or much farther a field. Justin and Deborah live at the winery and actively manage the operation. One might have trouble avoiding them on a visit.

Finding interesting storylines among the 80 or so wineries in Paso is not too hard. Take Tablas Creek Vineyard, a joint project between France’s Château Beaucastel and importer Robert Haas. They took thousands of cuttings from the famed Rhône Valley winery in 1990 and waited three years before planting them. Why? The U.S. Department of Agriculture mandates that vines be quarantined before going into the soil. Rather than using similar varietals from domestic sources, they waited for what they believe are superior grapes. They now run one of the more highly esteemed nurseries in the California wine industry. Oh, and they make some pretty nice wines, too.

Robert Hall Winery planted obscure Portuguese vines to closely replicate the inky dessert wines of Porto, not for any sound business reason, but because the boss, Robert Hall, loves Port-style wines. Since these Port-style wines are available only at the winery—and they are among the best American-made wines of their kind—this may be reason enough to visit Paso Robles. Of course, you can now order them on-line, too.

Then there’s the painstaking restoration of York Mountain Winery by David and Mary Weyrich, owners of Martin & Weyrich Winery. Founded in 1882, York Mountain is one of the country’s oldest and historic. Sitting on a ridge on the western side of Paso, nearly overlooking the Pacific Ocean, it is a tiny wine region unto itself, one of the smallest in California.

In early July, as I tasted a couple dozen cabernet sauvignon-based wines from Paso Robles, the fond memories of my visit washed over me. The quality of the wines seem to be on the rise, certainly as good as they were two years ago when I did my last blind tasting. But wine quality aside, I wondered if the look and feel of Paso Robles is what Napa once was.

To me Paso remains the farming community that all great winemaking regions have at their core. As wine areas grow up and gain fame, they can stray from their center, as is the case in places like Napa Valley.

Before we packed up our folding chairs, I told Kelly that I was not indicting Napa, but that her experience would be quite different than when she was there in the 1980s. Wine lovers feel compelled to visit the Holy Land of American winemaking, which has necessarily created numerous non-wine diversions and a lot of traffic. “If tasting wine, meeting winemakers and taking in the landscape rather than bus fumes are 1, 2 and 3 on your wine country touring list,” I told her, “then head south, young lady.”


If you visit Justin Vineyards & Winery, you’ll likely run into owners Deborah and Justin Balwin at work.

2004 Justin Vineyards, Isosceles, Paso Robles, Calif.

• $60

• Two Thumbs Way Up

• Aromas of rich black cherry with notes of nutmeg and cinnamon. An ever-changing wine as it opened up. Rich, blackberry flavors with a touch of leather at first. It evolved into a chocolaty, earthy, spice-laden, complex wine after a couple hours.

2005 Peachy Canyon, Cirque du Vin, Paso Robles, Calif.

• $20

• Two Thumbs Up

• Intense aromas of black cherry, smoke and minerals. Big flavors of plum, blueberry and blackberry, which soften several hours after bottle was opened.

2005 Paso Creek Cabernet Sauvignon, Paso Robles, Calif.

• $18

• Two Thumbs Up

• Pleasant, smoky, Tootsie-Roll aromas were followed round, rich flavors of black cherry, cinnamon and cola. A velvety wine that I found hard not to gulp, but still offered interesting complexity.

2003 Norman Vineyards, Reserve, Cabernet Sauvignon, Paso Robles, Calif.

• $36

• Two Thumbs Up

• Lots of smoky, mineral aromas with ample rich red and dark berry, too. Smooth as silk, especially for a big wine. It bursts dark berry, dry cherry, plum and cola flavors. High in alcohol (14.7 percent), but you don’t taste it.