Why the heck not? I made quick work of convincing my girlfriend Joyce that this would be a “good” adventure (and not like the last winemaker we shepherded around). So a few days later we headed up the coast to meet Dave at the airport in San Luis Obispo. We made quick work of getting him loaded into my VW to drive the 30 miles north to the Paso Robles wine country and make our 9 PM dinner reservation at Villa Creek.
Villa Creek is the local winemaker hangout, so we ran into a bunch of people who knew Dave from previous visits to Hospice du Rhônes gone past. The place is owned by Cris & Joanne Cherry, also proprietors of the Villa Creek winery. The cuisine featured at the restaurant had the requisite Californian/Italian/France/Mexican influences, with all dishes made from fresh local organic ingredients in a way that suits the local wine style (and particularly the style of Cris’ wine. In general there are a lot of similarities between Paso Robles winemaking and that of the Barossa Valley. This is not unexpected, given the similarities in climate, soil, temperature variation, and annual rainfall (or lack thereof). Paso has a lot of Rhône varieties planted alongside Cabernet and Pinot Noir, so there’s something to please even the pickiest imbiber.
The next morning, we headed out to visit some of the local wineries. We visited Justin Smith at Saxum and he took us out into the James Berry Vineyard for a look at his still-on-the-vine Mataro and a glimpse of a neighbor’s tractor that had been sent up the hill a little too soon after the recent rainstorm (7” in three hours)! The tractor remained in the vineyard after having slid backwards and taking most of an entire row of vines with it. We also stopped to see Cris at the Villa Creek Winery where we barrel-sampled pretty much everything in the place.
Our timing in Paso Robles was such that it happened to be the weekend of the region’s big harvest festival, so from here on out we were battling crowds at every stop. Along about 4 PM we pretty much lost the desire to elbow our way to the front of the line for a taste of Zinfandel so we decamped back to the Paso town square and took up residence at The Crooked Kilt, a Scottish bar serving Irish beer (sometimes it’s just not worth asking questions). A few restorative ales later, we were back on the road to attend a harvest party at Linne Calodo winery. Half the winemakers in Paso Robles were in attendance and the magnum of 2002 The Pict we brought pretty much evaporated as soon as it was opened. Many tacos were consumed, the band played, more wine was drunk, and as we drifted off into the night there was a desire to continue the adventure.
So back it was to the bar at Villa Creek where we hooked up with a bunch of the Villa Creek crew who were enjoying restorative ales of their own. However, a thirst for something decidedly non-local and not particularly ale-like had developed, so a foray was made into the depths of the restaurant’s seemingly bottomless wine cellar, and by the end of the evening, definitive progress had been made by the Torbreck tasting team toward answering the question of whether Thierry Allemand’s Reynard bottling of Cornas was really better than his Chaillot bottling (not always) and if 2005 Torbreck Factor was in the same league as its French cousin (it is) and if St Joseph, even a good one, can hold its own against Cornas and Barossa Syrah (not so much).
Having had enough fun for the evening, Joyce and I headed back to the hotel, while Dave opted to take a shorter route and headed a couple of doors down the street to see what was happening at the Crooked Kilt. By all accounts it was a good move to make -the next morning he mentioned something about “girl fight” and “police officers” and “you don’t often get this sort of entertainment in Tanunda” but I’ll leave you to pry the story out of him the next time you run into him.
To be continued...........
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