Day 6 – Paso Robles: Vineyard Tour

We woke up at 7am to blue and sunny skies. Today we had an all day vineyard tour planned. There are limited Ubers and cell service in Paso so the options for a wine tour are either doing a group tour on a bus (cheaper but you don’t get to select the wineries) or hiring a personal driver. Because I had specific wineries that I wanted to visit, we booked a private driver through Destination Drivers. It’s a unique program in the sense that they drive your car, or in this case our BMW X3 rental, instead of having a company with a fleet that picks you up in a car or SUV (and slightly cheaper).

Our driver’s name was Sean, a local Californian who has been with the company for 10+ years. I asked him what the average # of wineries people visit in a day and he said 3-4, but the most he’s ever done was 9 (however that was pre Covid when wineries opened up their bars similar to a tasting room, nowadays you have to make a reservation). I also asked him what his favorite Paso wineries to visit are and he said the more boutique wineries and those along Peach Canyon Road — we’ll have to try those next time!

Our first stop was Tablas Creek, a winery that my client Julie had recommended. We ordered their estate flight and summer flight to share. Our sommelier was also very knowledgeable and told us the history of the winery as she poured us wine. I learned that Tablas is the pioneer for California’s Rhône movement because of the partnership between the Haas family and the Perrin family (from France). I also learned that Tablas Creek is a dry farm because there’s no additional irrigation needed, due to the fact that a lot of the property has natural limestone everywhere which helps retain water so that the vines can absorb water during the dryer months. I also learned about two new grapes/types of wine that I’ve never had before – Mourvèdre and Tannat. Tablas Creek was actually responsible for introducing Tannat (a grape varietal) to the US. When they sent the grapes over from France, the man packing them thought it would grow well here – and it turns out that Tannat is one of the easiest grape varietals to grow in Paso.

After finishing our flights and learning all about Tablas Creek’s history. We ended up buying 4 bottles – 2 sauv Blancs, 2 rose, and 1 red that was Stelis favorite. Onto the next!

Our next stop was Daou. This is the winery I was looking forward to the most simply because the views are supposed to be incredible – and upon arrival it was simply breathtaking. The photos below simply do not do it justice. The winery resembles a large Spanish villa, with the rolling hills of Paso and the vineyard below. The outdoor patio has large couches, stone tables for dining, and beautiful landscaping surrounding the winery.

Daou is one of the few wineries in Paso with a full restaurant menu available on a weekday so we ordered our 2 flights of wine with some lunch. To start we had a meat & charcuterie board (both the freshness and the presentation blew away the one we had yesterday at Austin Hope) and 1/2 dozen oysters from Morro Bay that came with cocktail sauce and a passion fruit mignionette. Our server even brought us a complimentary round of Chardonnay to pair with the oysters & he recommended to take a sip of wine, then the oyster with the mignonette, then a swig of Chardonnay to follow. It’s truly incredible how pairing food with wine can really bring out different flavors in a meal. For our entree we shared beef cheeks (something I’ve never heard of or had before) but it melted in my mouth and paired perfectly with the Cabernet I was sipping on.

As we finished lunch, our server poured us the last of our flight – a reserve Cabernet called Eye of the Falcon. Between the wine and the views I just felt so calm, at ease, and removed from reality.

After we finished the flight we were having such a good time that we didn’t want to leave. We saw at the bottom of the menu a new wine called Patrimony, that Daou was featuring but not included in the tasting, so we decided we had to try it and ordered a 4 oz pour to share. Our sommelier called it the Bentley of Paso Wine – and he was not wrong. It ended up being our favorite.

At this point Sean our driver had politely come over twice to let us know we were running a bit behind schedule since we still had 1 more winery to visit. In retrospect, between the delicious food and incredible wine I could have stayed at Daou for the rest of the day. Nonetheless, we did not want to skip the last winery so we decided to buy a few bottles before leaving Daou and heading to our 3pm reservation (30 minutes late -— woops)

Our last and final stop was Justin Vineyards. We were set to arrive at Justin about 30 min later than our original reservation time, but luckily it was a weekday so Sean said we should be fine. However just to be safe Sean called Justin and was able to move us to a later reservation time slot.

Justin was smaller compared to the grand Daou mountain, but still had lovely vineyard grounds surrounding the winery. Also we learned that the company that owns Justin also owns Fiji water, which is why you receive complimentary bottles with your tasting. Overall it was more corporate – so less of a wow factor compared to DAOU. Here they offered us two different flights – the classic and the estate wines so we ordered one of each. The estate flight had 3 different versions of Justin Isosceles Cab, which is what they are best known for & no surprise that those were also our favorite. We bought 2 bottles of cab and decided to head back to our Airbnb after a full day of wine.

Earlier that day, Julie had invited us over her house to hangout in the backyard and the pool after our wine tour if we were up for it. By 5pm it was still 90 degrees and HOT – so taking a dip in a pool sounded amazing. After hanging out for about an hour or so we were exhausted and went back to our Airbnb.

We had an 8:30pm reservation for Il Cortile, a well known Italian spot in Paso, but after a long hot day full of wine and sun we were beat. I couldn’t get over why I was so sleepy, it’s really not like me at all. Is this the new 28 year old Steph? Or was it just the combination of wine & the heat? I’m not sure. Regardless, we ended up cancelling our reservation and ordering takeout from Dellas, a casual Italian/Pizza spot. It was a perfectly relaxing dinner in our pajamas after a long but amazing day. We were lights out by 10pm since we had another early start and were back on the road to our next destination in the morning.