REPORT: Paso Robles Wine Tour

[Rebel Rose]

Just waiting for Kathy to get here with some coffee! We're ready to go!

[eje]

Mary,

Thanks so much for organizing this!

My wife and I had a great time.

For us the highlights were the great company and wonderful wines. Well, that and the mollusks!

I'll try to write up some more coherent thoughts and post some pictures once we get caught up on laundry etc.

Again, thanks so much!

[SiseFromm]

What a great trip! We really got the full experience, from touring the costal Cayucos Abalone Farm, wine tasting and touring adventures, with the culmination of the weekend at Windrose Farms for a completely unexpected garden party. It was a whirlwind of a weekend and I feel enriched with knowledge about the area. Who know Paso had so much to offer?!?

Jason from Tablas Creek was a gracious and informative host. We loved learning about the grafting process and the tasting was fun. Too bad those "Esprit de Beaucastel" bottles don't fit in the racking in our cellar! Stupid fat bottle syndrome. Damn you Pax, Tablas Creek, and Sea Smoke! How we were lucky enough to end up tasting with Justin from Saxum is still beyond me. I LOVE those new labels he's rocking. His kids are cool and I hope they enjoy the care package full of skateboards I'm sending their way.

We did survive Saturday and ended up at L'Aventure on Sunday afternoon. We were enchanted and stayed onsite forever. After tasting the delicious "Optimus" and the profound "Cuvee Coincidence", we sat on the terrace in front of the tasting room enjoying the vineyard view for at least a couple of hours. We popped a bottle of the Optimus and chatted with Jacob about his Jacob Toft wine project.

When we arrived at Windrose, we had no idea there would be a full-blown party happening. I was thinking the $25 covered some snacks and a tour, but what a treat to find out Flatbread Pizza Company was onsite grilling off pizzas in their mobile, wood-burning oven! The beers were flowing, the tomatoes were ripe, the puppies were playing, and the day was something out of a dream. I felt like I was in the middle of some rare shoot for a Food & Wine Magazine party.

[dockhl]

I agree. It was so much fun to meet other eGulleteers, and the food and (!!!) wine were phenomenal.

Here is a picture of the actual Rebel Rose, looking for Mom at the Abalone Farm

Cayucos Abalone Farm

BAGS of beautiful abalone shells

The awe-inspiring view from Saxum Vineyards

I seem to have lost several other photos.....I'll post them as I find them ~

Kathy

[Rebel Rose]

I'm glad everyone had a great time! I'll be posting photos and notes soon, in somewhat chronological order, and I certainly hope that others will as well. (I was not able to make the Windrose Farm tour as we had an unannounced visit from a South Carolina wine writer.)

[Rebel Rose]

Abalone's Revenge

We started the day at the Cayucos Abalone Farm with a personally guided tour conducted by Brad Buckley. Perched on small bluff overlooking the ocean, the farm produces almost 500,000 abalone a year. They culture only red abalone, under the brand name Ocean Rose.

Our first abalone epiphany was that abalone are not bi-valves like clams or oysters. They are snails. Gross, yet cool. Various strains of abalone also have their own particular flavor.

Conception begins in low-tech white tubs. Two tubs are filled with females, and one with males. Michelle saw the gonads up close and can describe the difference. Ab prefer to spawn during a full moon, and the staff plans accordingly. Justin inquired about ambience but was assured they didn’t need candlelight or music.

The water is changed daily, dumped out through fine membranes to catch the microscopic babies which are then laid back in clean water. When they are the size of a fingernail, they are placed in the nursery—four foot wide tubs with small hoses oxygenating the water. The hoses are also used to inoculate the tubs with algae—plugs of green stuff are allowed to form in the hoses and then blown into the tub to make ‘seaweed slushies.’

When the abs are large enough to survive in the outdoor tanks, they are gently moved into baskets and placed in stair-stepped concrete basins. They are fed both ‘soft food’ seaweed slushies and kelp until they are old enough to eat solid food. Abalone grip surfaces so hard that moving them by hand is not only labor intensive but many abs would be injured as well, and skin tears or crushed shells invite infection. So the farm places the plastic nursery tubes in a tank and they bubble CO2 through the water, anesthetizing the abs. They conk out and drop to the bottom of the tank where they are gently collected and moved to their new basins. Actually Brad was pretty hilarious about their learning curve at the farm and had many stories to tell about figuring the whole thing out. He’s worked there for 20 years. (“What, did he start when he was 10?” asked Kathy under her breath.)

The farm has an ocean going vessel with a harvesting boom, and they lease rights to the offshore kelp beds from the State of California. Kelp grows at a rate of several inches per day, but the captain is careful to harvest no more than 4” a day. He thins beds to allow more flow through the kelp forest, and will also thin heavy beds because if they are too massive, winter storms will rip them out by the roots, destroying the bed. So kelp harvesting is an agri-ocean art in itself. We were there on feeding day and saw huge 1-ton bales of wet kelp in rope bags being loaded onto an old flatbed truck. Workers chop the kelp with a shovel and place handfuls in each basin. The basins are small, maybe 4’ square, but the abs are voracious feeders. In extreme weather conditions in late fall or winter when the kelp beds are torn up or the boats can’t get out, the farm has a fall-back recipe for abalone nutrition they invented during the El Nino years. They mix a slurry of bran, seaweed and other nutrients into a dough, extrude it through a handcranked pasta machine and bake it in the oven. Snail spaghetti. How cool is that. I asked Brad if it was edible and he laughed and said that while bland, it was definitely edible and nutritious.

On our way to the nursery we walked by a trough filled with dulse, a frilly purplish seaweed used to feed the juveniles, and Brad offered us each a taste. It was salty of course, but also meaty. He said that when fried crispy it tastes like bacon. In addition to feeding abalone, they also sell it to restaurants for garnish and seaweed salad. We paused here to discuss various ways to prepare abalone, but Brad’s favorite is a simple tenderizing protocol of 25 whacks, then a quick sizzle on a high quality griddle, and served with butter and herbs.

It takes four years to grow an abalone to hors d’oeuvre size, and seven years to grow a medallion-sized steak. Abalone will grow almost an inch per year for 5-7 years, but only one quarter of an inch per year after that. God only knows how old the huge abs which used to be casually harvested by locals in the central coast really were.

Abalone farming is low-impact, especially as abalone have almost no excretions. They are also extremely sensitive and the farm sells young abalone to various firms and government agencies for use in water testing as “indicator” species.

We visited the freezing and packaging rooms, and Brad invited us to help ourselves to shells . . . buckets of gorgeous, cleaned and polished abalone shells with reddish exteriors. The shells are sold to local jewelry artisans who produce amulets and earrings from them. Several members scored a stack of shells for table servings.

Most of the abalone production is delivered fresh; about 30% is trimmed and frozen. Live abalone can survive in good health for 30 hours. The farm also exports to China and Japan. Couriers race to LAX with live abalone carefully packaged in seawater baggies and styrofoam, and they time their trips to arrive just in time to place the abs on an outgoing plane.

We finished our visit at the basins holding mature abalone. Melissa is holding a mature ab. They sink down onto your hand and grip hard. It’s kind of creepy. In the close up, you can see the foot and head curling around Mel’s fingers. Almost all of us held a pet abalone for a few minutes or fished in the basins for a loose ab.

Abalone grip so hard that unless you catch one by surprise, you are unable to pry it off the basin. Divers used to drown while collecting abalone . . . a diver would pry an abalone loose, stick his fingers under the shell to lift it and then in surprise and pain when the ab clamps down would drop his ab bar. At that point, there would be no way to get his hand loose and he would drown. (Tank diving is illegal when gathering abalone.) I thought these stories were urban legend, but Brad assured us the stories are true. It’s called “abalone’s revenge.”

[dockhl]

Wow, Mary ! You remembered a lot

Brad was a wonderful guide @ the abalone farm, and was happy to share every single little step of the process. Whew. It is definitely labor intensive !

Thanks for the update. Please feel free (everyone) to kick in your little bits !

[Rebel Rose]

A Touch of Terroir

We arrived at Tablas Creek at noon sharp. Tablas Creek Vineyard is a cooperative venture between the Robert Haas family and the Perrin family of Chateauneuf du Pape. The tasting rooms were packed as Saturday was also the date of their wine club blending party and barbecue. Nevertheless, we were warmly greeted by general manager Jason Haas, who guided us outside into the quiet of the herb gardens surrounding the crush pad and spent the next two hours entertaining us with stories of the winery and vineyard venture. Jason related the history of the winery and his parents’ search for the perfect site for Rhone varietals. After decades of visiting potential sites, they decided the Meditteranean climate and calcareous soils of west Paso Robles were the most likely place for the Rhone varietals they wanted to plant.

Before we headed out to the vineyard, we squeezed behind a wall of stacked half-ton picking bins to look ‘inside’ a retaining wall made of limestone rocks cleared from the vineyard. Tablas built a ‘window’ into the wall that allows us to look past the wall into the bedrock that exists about 10’ below the vineyard surface. Looking in, we see the white-grey surface of calcareous hardpan. Jason passed around flakes of calcareous mudstone/sandstone rock so we could feel how light and porous the rocks are. He then explained how the calcareous soils of the central coast (which do not exist in Napa) act as a water sponge, draining moisture away during spring rains, but wicking it back up from aquifers during dry spells. Pre-limestone soils are also easily fractured by searching roots, which encourages deep penetration by the vines and therefore a more complex source of nutrients and minerals.

We strolled out to the very center of the vineyard, where we could view the entire compass of the property, which is planted to syrah, grenache, mourvedre, counoise, viognier, roussanne, grenache blanc, and picpoul blanc.

Jason explained how the vines were planted according to their ripening needs, with heat-loving varieties planted on the south and west slopes, and early ripening varieties planted on the cooler east and north slopes. Then we wandered over to some grenache vines and Jason invited us to pick some grapes and taste them.

Here Jason Haas, left, is showing guest Jason Coulston how to open a grape to look at the color of the seeds, which should be a toasty brown when the grapes are phenologically ripe.

Then we strolled back to the main complex and the nursery. I hope someone has some shots of this, because it was pretty darn cool. Jason demonstrated how a vine clip is grafted to a rootstock. Instead of the usual field V-cuts, Tablas has this little machine operated by a foot pedal that creates an omega-shaped cut and it connects the vine and rootstock, all in one slick move. Several of us left with little vine sticks as a souvenir.

Then it was off to the crush pad for a quick look at the winery equipment and then into the cool cellar where we got to stick our fingers into freshly crushed fruit to taste the sweet must. Jason toured us past the huge oak foudres used for barrel aging, and we found ourselves behind the tasting room. And there, in the cellar, was a table laden with about 9 unopened bottles of wine and a large number of wineglasses. Knowing that Tablas had private events scheduled for both morning and afternoon, I had no idea that this table was . . . for us!

Jason personally opened and tasted us on seven current releases, a 2003 library wine, and two dessert wines, one of which was a production of only 1 barrel. I know several of us left with a selection of wines, and I hope you’ll share your wine tasting notes in the Society wine forum. Tonight, actually, I am enjoying a chilled 2006 Tablas Creek Rose (60%mourvedre, 28% grenache, 12% counoise) as I type.

From there, we were shown the patio where the picnic tables were covered in linens and a “Reserved” sign awaited us. Unfortunately, we had to gulp our lunches from Out of the Box and run. It was a great visit, and I hope that our guests enjoyed this behind-the-scenes, upfront and personal look at an amazing winery and vineyard operation.

[SiseFromm]

I forgot how rushed we were by the end of the extremely thorough tour at Tablas. I too wished we had some time to relax after our tour and sit down to a nice, slow lunch. A bottle of the Tablas Creek Rose would have been a perfect match for our boxed lunches. We felt bad enough as it was that we were running late to Saxum so we powered through the lunch and then took off following Kathy to our next stop.

Here's a quick shot of Justin, Melissa, Holly, and myself with the incomparable Justin Smith of Saxum Winery.

p.s. - Look at all that yummy, brand new oak!

Edited September 20, 2007 by SiseFromm (log)

[SiseFromm]

hen we strolled back to the main complex and the nursery. I hope someone has some shots of this, because it was pretty darn cool.

Mary, we should have pics of that section of the tour soon. Justin took over 700 photos during the trip and he's already paired that number down to 300 or so. He said he would FTP the entire set to me later this week, after which I'll post a pretty extensive photo essay of the weekend.

[dockhl]

Nice Saxum pic , if I must say myself............I'm glad I got the barrels in the picture! And the dogs

[Rebel Rose]

Mary, we should have pics of that section of the tour soon.  Justin took over 700 photos during the trip and he's already paired that number down to 300 or so.  He said he would FTP the entire set to me later this week, after which I'll post a pretty extensive photo essay of the weekend.

700 photos? Down to 300? Holy cow. We'll be looking forward to that.

[SiseFromm]

cool.gif 700 photos? Down to 300? Holy cow. We'll be looking forward to that.

Well, I have a feeling 200 of them will be of either Justin or Melissa . . . but I'll spare you.

When I get the photos I'll try to post a few from each of the events, including the Windrose lunch and party.

[Rebel Rose]

Prospecting for Oil

After lunch at Tablas Creek, Jason, Holly, Kathy, Justin and Melissa headed over to Saxum. Eric, Michelle and I stopped at Willow Creek Olive Ranch, home of Pasolivo olive oil. I am seriously addicted to their orange and tangerine oils, made with oils pressed from citrus rinds and blended with olive oil. They also offer their estate oil, a California blend, a low production kalamata oil, and lemon and lime olive oils.

Pasolivo was featured in Gourmet magazine, and sells almost all their oils via their private club and tasting room. We met with owner Josh Yaguda, who gave us a very entertaining tour and private tasting.

The olives are picked by hand, and given that they ripen late (generally late October or early November) as winter storms approach, the picking is done quickly. So rocks, leaves and other matter come in with the olives. The olives are poured into this chute and passed under the blue vacuum hood, which sucks up any light debris like drying leaves, twigs and fine dirt. Rocks and other matter are removed by hand or shaken out as the olives pass through the chute.

The olives are then placed in the “press,” which isn’t really a press but a complicated centrifuge. First, the olives and the pits are macerated into a chunky must. If I remember correctly, a little super-heated water is added to loosen the must. The centrifugal action of the press slowly (very, verrry slowly) pulls the oil from the must and deposits it in a long, low covered pan.

Josh lifted the lid of the pan and showed us where this first pressing is deposited. The oil is still murky and unfiltered, almost like mud. At this point, it is called dirty oil.

From there, the oil is moved to a vertical centrifuge where it is processed again to remove gross impurities. Josh is standing next to a dismantled centrifuge. From there, the oil goes into a tank, and then, over the next few months, is is patiently racked and returned, just like wine.

In January or early February, the virgin oils are bottled in small batches, and every bottle is hand labeled and marked with the variety and vintage.

During the harvest season, Pasolivo also hosts a “community press” day. Everyone in Paso Robles who owns a few olive trees is invited to bring their buckets or bins of olives, which are all poured into the press to create a community blend. (A certain amount of mass is required for the press to operate, so it is not possible to do tiny lots.) Everyone brings food and wine to while away the extremely slow process, and all leave with a few bottles of extra, extra, extra virgin oil.

The press is a monster of tubes, valves, baffles, grates, baskets and small tanks, and it is cleaned only with super-heated water. It takes two people two days to clean the press. Therefore, if it looks like there might be a pause in the picking schedule, Josh will break harvest lots up and do a small lot each day in order to keep the oils in the press absolutely fresh.

From the press room, we returned to the sunny tasting room to taste some oils. Josh broke out the professional tasting glasses, used by judges in competitions. The glasses are blue, to hide the color of the oil and prevent color-based judgment. We cupped the glass in one hand to warm the oil, and covered the glass with our other hand to trap the aromas. When I sneaked a sniff, Josh shook his head. “It’s not ready yet!” Duly chastened, I went back to swirling and warming. Finally, we lift the glasses to our nose, lift our hands slightly and draw in a deep breath. Michelle demonstrates the proper technique.

Wow. The aroma is so much more explosive when done this way. An amazing experience. Then we were expected to taste the oil, drawing it deeply back into our palate and aerating it (sort of a gargle) to coat the palate. Have you ever tried to aerate olive oil? My spastic efforts were a cross between choking and dribbling. I felt like a moron. Nevertheless, the experience was incredible. Sweetness coated the front of my tongue, earth and vegetable down the middle, a slightly bitter twinge on the edges, and a blast of citrus at the very back of my throat that made me cough. Twice. “A two-cough oil,” Josh nodded. “That’s considered a good one.”

[Rebel Rose]

Dinner at Villa Creek

Our final adventure on Saturday was to gather at Villa Creek for a dinner prepared by chef Tom Fundaro.

The menu:

Amuse: Abalone Ceviche

1st course: Gambas with Ciro Bread

2nd course: Heirloom Tomato and Cucumber Salad

3rd course: Braised Local Grass Fed Short Ribs with Oaxacan Mole, Creamy Polenta, and Sauteed Broccolini

Final: Fruit Gratinado and Hungarian Shortbread (prepared with preserved citrus from Windrose Farms)

We had the entire back patio and fountain to ourselves, and twinkling lights overhead under a canvas canopy, on a warm yet gentle night. I was disappointed in the abalone course; there did not seem to be more than a teaspoon of abalone in each serving. Certainly not the equivalent of a 3-4" medallion or steak. But all in all, the dinner, wine and conversation were great. Our table was consuming mostly fresh, tannic young reds. But Jason ordered an 1998 Alban Reva Syrah and graciously shared with all. I thought it was an amazing wine, very closely echoing Robert Parker's initial review:

"classic nose of bacon fat, smoke, blackberries, and licorice. Full-bodied and rich, with a vanillin note added to the black fruit and smoke characteristics, this lush, full throttle Syrah is accessible, but should age nicely for a decade."

I thought the wine was soft and earthy with definite notes of bacon, anise and char. A lovely example from a cold El Nino vintage, and frankly I think it will continue to age gracefully for a few more years. Thank you for sharing that, Jason.

I tried to ply Erik with enough wine to get him to stand up and say a few words about the Society, but in the end I lost at roshambo, and the group of us raised a toast to making new friends and finding new interests.

We passed around a basket for donations, and raised $190 for culinary scholarships. Dover Canyon Winery matched that with $205, for a total donation of $400.

[Rebel Rose]

I understand several of you enjoyed some extended hospitality at L'Aventure on Sunday, as well as the heirloom tomato festival at Windrose. I am sorry I didn't catch up to you on Sunday--we had a wine writer from South Carolina stop by around noon and I spent part of the afternoon chatting with her and tasting wine in the shade of our crabapple tree.

Erik and Michelle, you came by the winery early in the day on Sunday, and I'm sorry I missed you!! I hope you enjoyed Megan's hospitality. Thank you for stopping by and purchasing some wine.

[SiseFromm]

We did indeed enjoy both L'Aventure and Windrose on Sunday! I still need to post those pics but I don't have a burned DVD yet from Justin, the man with all the pics. He posted a web-based slideshow of his favorite photos but they're mostly of just the four of us so I was going to try to load the best group-related photos when I get all of the raw files.

Jacob Toft was working at L'Aventure that afternoon and delighted us with some great pours of rare bottles of estate wine. The Cuvee Coincidence was absolutely stunning and I blew whatever was left in my wallet on a couple of bottles, which of course will probably age forever. We decided to buy a bottle of the Optimus and sit out on the front porch, enjoying fine wine and the view of the slopes at L'Aventure. We chatted for awhile with Jacob about this and that and got his take on the local scene.

From L'Aventure we headed to Windrose. What a delight. We had NO idea what would unfold when we arrived. A full-blown party was in effect in the front of the Windrose residence under the big tree. Flatbread Pizza Company was on-hand with a wood-fired oven. The pizzas were among the best I can ever remember having . . . anywhere. The tomatoes were flowing, the salad of bitter melon was delicious, the beer was divine, and walking through the farm and the orchard was something out of a dream.

I wish I was back there right now.