Jacob Toft in Tin City (wife Kelly worked at Linne Calodo for years)
Clos Selene
Booker
L’Aventure
if you’re out on the west side - at Law for an 11am, for instance, and you’re driving over to Linne or Epoch for an afternoon tasting - i recommend stopping at Calcareous for lunch…they have light cheese boards/etc. & snacks you can buy or you can take your own & buy a bottle from them. The views are SPECTACULAR up there with tables outside their tasting room. i’m not a big Calcareous aficionado either way, but it’s a great place to stop for a few minutes and relax. Highly recommend it
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We go to Paso about every other year. Try to branch out to new vineyards and restaurants each time we go, but there are a few go-to stops we make sure to never miss.
5 go-to vineyards:
Halter Ranch - great wines, fun cave tour, amazing views and nature.
Brecon Estate - intimate, but not intimidating. Relaxed. Always surprised by how much I like all of their wines.
Turley - amazing zins.
Tablas Creek - benchmark for Rhone style wines in Paso.
Opolo - fantastic atmosphere. Always enjoy the staff that does the tastings. Great food. Stop here for lunch and you will thank yourself.
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Hey all!!
Thank you so much for the recommendations. Below I have listed where we ended up and my thoughts for future travelers. All of this is obviously based on my (primitive?) taste buds.
Herman Story- literally had the owner help guide me into a parking spot. Super personable staff (Jesse was awesome) and Russell came in at one point, cracked open a Coors Light, and started a conversation with us. Phenomenal vibe and I personally love his wines. Cannot recommend this spot more to those who want to try great wine in a non-pretentious environment.
Turtle Rock- Tin City was a cool spot. Even though we were without our children, we saw plenty of young couples with strollers walking around the area. Take that as a positive for some or negative for others. In our case, it was never a distraction. As for Turtle Rock, their wines were amazing! The owner was there to walk us through their flight and we loved everything. I think the biggest surprise was how phenomenal their G2 blend was. Maybe my favorite wine from whole trip.
Sans Liege- So the Offering was one of those first wines that got me hooked so this was as much a pilgrimage as anything else. That said, this was the most mediocre tasting we had. Good wines and friendly staff, but nothing extra special. Best thing going for it is their friendly price points for good wine.
Torrin- Their tasting room is in their production facility and it was absolutely beautiful. Remote. We had a lot of attention, but my biggest knock on this stop is their lack of wine! They have such limited production, we tasted more of their pinot and chardonnay’s from their sub brand than the Torrin. We did get to try a 2015 Tsundere and that was really cool, but the purchase amount was limited! I’d say that if you are a member this would be a phenomenal stop. For us, who are not members, we really didnt get to try enough of their portfolio to convince us to become members.
Justin- ok, so everyone can judge me on this one and compare this review to the Olive Garden review from Marilyn Hagerty, but I loved this stop! We have been members for awhile and their Wine Society lounge tasting was the most relaxed and robust of all the stops. They also popped pretty much everything in their portfolio. Was it best wine we had? No. But we got to try their Focus, Reserve Iscoceles, and Platinum Cabernet, which can hold their own with some of the other stops. My wife and I really appreciated the environment and staff here. Just an easy stop. Also, it worked out pretty well to have lunch at Justin so we didnt have to go back to town before our next stop.
Linne Calodo- By far the coolest tasting room I have ever tasted. And that lineup is phenomenal. I loved how they poured their offerings all at once so you could compare and contrast. This one did not disappoint.
That is it! We only had two days so this pretty much maxed out our pallets. Thank you to everyone who provided recommendations on here! We already have a solid list of stops for next time.
Thanks for the notes. I think we may go this spring.
Chris,
Were you members at most of these places? If not, what were the tasting fees like? Just curious as I have not tasted at most of these places like Torrin and Linne Calodo.
Cheers!
I was not. I was only a member at Justin. The tasting fees were about $30 at each of those places, but I only paid at Torrin because they limited the number of Torrin bottles you could buy and it was not high enough to waive the fee. We joined at Linne and bought enough to waive their fee. I think Turtle Rock was $15 and waived w a purchase of 2 bottles so we didnt pay there either.
Hope that helps!
Happy to help with any other info!
Torrin was one of my favorite places to visit because of the great wine, wonderful ambiance, and intimate experience, but you’r right when you point out that the wine available is more limited due to how often/quickly they sell out. Having said that, when I went for the first time last June, I wasn’t really a fan of Pinot or Chardonnay, but theirs really impressed me (and I bought and buy a bunch of their Lagom wines, which I think are great to drink while you’re waiting for the Torrin wines to settle down).
Also, if you become a member, their pickup party is great. They have several sessions so it’s never over crowded, live music, great food to pair with the wines, and plenty of great wine.
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Yeah that makes total sense! I liked the Lagom wines as well, but I guess I just wasnt in that mindset in Paso. I would 100% recommend the stop if you are a member, or become a member before you go =)
Just came back from Torrin, based on the above recommendations. They were pouring two Pinots (Lagom) and three Torrin. Definitely a keeper and the Banshee was the wine of the trip (compared to Epoch, Denner, Herman Story).
Happy to hear you had a great experience (Banshee is my favorite cuvee from them so far too). I’m really looking forward to visiting Torrin in the new few weeks to pick up my allocation and taste the 2017s. I’m really excited to try the 2017 Le Devoir, which is a brand new cuvee from them. Did you get to taste that and, if so, what did you think?
Honestly, Le Devoir was also right up there as well. Delicious. So interesting to have a wine with that much Graciano blended in.
Just came back a couple days ago. Where you visit depends on what you like. There’s a lot of high-octane wine being made there but there’s some super-interesting wine as well.
Perusing this thread I’ve not seen any of these, so here are a few. None of them are often mentioned on this site.
If you want Bordeaux blends, and frankly I’d usually avoid them from Paso, you could do a LOT worse than Aleksandr. They’re bottling their wine at 12.9 and 13.2 and it’s amazingly good and fresh. Not cheap, but low-octane, tannic, not green, just beautiful. They were trying to do something that paid homage to the Right Bank in Bordeaux and they succeeded as far as I’m concerned.
Other than them, mostly I’d go with non-Bordeaux grapes.
My number one find a few years ago and still today is Bodegas de Edgar. He was making the wine for Hug, which he’s now closed, but he has his own label focusing on Spanish grapes. He’s moving into a new location under construction right now, a bit out of town on the east side of the expressway. He has produced the nearest rendition of Priorat wines I’ve found in the US. The wines are blends of the Spanish grapes from Tarragona - Monastrell, Garnacha, Cariñena, Tempranillo, etc., and he’s right on the money. Outstanding stuff that, just like Priorat, retains acidity while offering full ripeness. No alcoholic burn, but tasty fruit and major acidity, which astonished me the first time I encountered it.
Part of it is the fruit he gets from the Paper Street vineyard. That’s just great fruit. And because they own that vineyard, visit J Dusi. I’ve passed them by for years and never tasted the wine. The wine maker, Janelle, is fourth generation Dusi but she has that magnificent vineyard for some of her estate wines. The Mourvedre that she gets from Paper Street is first rate and merits real attention. They’re known for their Zins but their other wines from that vineyard are superior IMO.
And then you might look at Glunz. They do a nice job with their Zin, again, not crazy high alcohol. They also do a fun angelica, which is a fortified wine.
Again though, it depends on what you want. If you want Pinot Noir or big stuff like Herman Story, there are plenty of other suggestions.
August Ridge shut down a few months ago. They retired. I ended up buying some wine as I loved there Deep powerful cabernets
Wow, didn’t know that. I know they opened another testing room in downtown Santa Barbara just a few years ago so it’s surprising that they shut down.
I do remember buying some good Cab there and also Barbera and Nebbiolo were great some vintages.
GregT - Remember going to Hug many years ago. Wine was really unique and intense. It was pretty expensive but couldn’t resist and bought a few bottles.
+1 on Bodegas de Edgar. i believe they used to share a room with HUG but now have their own tasting room above some other winery/distillery. We almost couldn’t find it on a trip a couple years ago.
Bodegas de Edgar recently moved to a new building at 3550 Combine St in Paso, across 46E from the Hug/BdE location.
-Al
Yep. Under construction and nearly four times the size. He was making the Hug wines and making his own in that facility, but he’s gotten bigger and has decided to close out the Hug label. A shame because he did a good job with those too, but you can only do so much. At any rate, his wines are really first rate IMHO.
And I agree with some of the other recs like Lone Madrone.
I think the new facility is complete or mostly complete and at least the tasting room has moved. It appears another winery has the same address, maybe a client or friend of his.
-Al