Tuesday, February 18, 2014

The Scenic Wineries and then some..

Today we started out at Calcareous Vineyard calcareous.com.   What a beautiful, panoramic view they have! It has to be one the best views I've seen in Paso.   Plus they have a lot of great outdoor seating to enjoy the view.   They have wine and food pairings on the weekend, but not during the week so I can't speak for the food.   However, the Traveling Hillbilly thinks this might be a great place to grab lunch or a snack.





After that we headed to Chateau Margene chateaumargene.com.  Given it was not on a hilltop the view was not quite as spectacular as Calcareous, but was still a beautiful place.  Wines were pricey, but good.


For lunch we headed to Aron Hill Vineyards aronhillvineyards.com.   They have delicious salads and paninis.   We didn't do a tasting here, but I did order a glass of their Chardonnay with my lunch.  It was delicious.


We had time for one more stop before calling it a day.  We headed to Herman Story hermanstorywines.com.   They are typically only open Thursday-Sunday, but thanks to our friend Edgar, of Bodega de Edgar, bodegadeedgar.com we were able to get an appointment.  They treated us so well and we got to try a lot of great wines!   Russell and his team seem to truly enjoy what they do and you can tell they have a lot of fun there.   Hank, Russell's dog, was also on sight and he was a lot of fun too!

The Traveling Hillbilly Will not Be Deterred by the 405 Closing!

What better way to spend the long holiday weekend than wine tasting in Paso Robles?   Actually heading up on Sunday to go wine tasting Mon-Wed is better, this way you beat the crowds.   Traffic on the 405 wasn't too bad heading out Sunday morning, however we figured why run the risk of getting stuck and headed up PCH.  Plus, it's much more scenic drive.  

We had a great day driving up the coast and stopped at one of my favorite wineries, Zaca Mesa zacamesa.com on the way to Paso.  With Monday being a holiday, it was packed on Sunday.  It's not nearly as much fun to do a tasting when it's so crowded.  The staff is just so busy pouring they do not really have time to talk to you and share information about the wines.  Despite the crowds, the wines of course were delicious and we got to meet Cheeseburger, commonly know as Cheese, a boxer/great Dane mix!   He was a pretty cool dog.

We figured we could make one more stop before heading to the hotel, so we stopped at Fess Parker fessparker.com They also make some great wines, but their wines are little on the pricier side, so it's usually not the best place to try and buy and everyday red.  However, they had quite the deal on one of their blends.   Unfortunately it wasn't on the tasting menu so we bought a bottle to try and then wound up buying a whole case.   The price was just too good to pass up.