Paso Robles Annual Report: An Odd-Year Vintage Takes an Extraordinary Turn

Winemakers in California’s Paso Robles are releasing wines from a vintage that they are calling one of their best ever, and after tasting 365 wines in September in the region, we share the same excitement for the 2021.

"2021 was more regular with some little heat waves, but we were able to handle it,” said Stephane Asseo of L’Aventure, one of the leading wineries in the region. His L’Aventure Paso Robles Willow Creek District Estates Cuvée 2021 was one of the best of our tasting. “So, I would say it was not even a typical California-style vintage, as 2016 or 2012, but there was still a lot of sun."

Asseo said that the red was a prototype of what he dreamed of doing in California almost a quarter of a century ago when he moved from Bordeaux to Paso to make wine. “When I moved to Paso, I was not doing a straight syrah or straight cab, not even a straight Bordeaux blend. I started right away with this crazy blend, and I was a little bit alone in this field, but now I can see it's working."

Scott Hawley, the winemaker and owner of Torrin Wines, made the point during our visit that odd numbers of recent vintages have been great years for Paso, such as 2017, 2019 and 2021. “The latter is the best vintage that we've seen in 15 years,” he said. “The quantity was low but the quality was outstanding."

Jordan Fiorentini, the vice president of winemaking and vineyards at Epoch Estate, was more singular about the 2021 vintage. "Wonderful vintage," she said. "It is the best vintage that I can remember because it was sort of a balance of warm and cool. Like it was just perfect."

She pointed out that the balance of warm and cool weather is one of the key traits that make Paso what it is, especially on its western side, allowing grapes to hang longer, achieving the right fruit and phenolic maturation while retaining acidity and freshness.

She added that she was impressed with the ripeness and tannin quality of her wines in 2021. A smaller crop with smaller berries delivered better tannins in her wines. "Wines from 2021 have a very precise ripeness to them," she said.

Daniel Daou of Daou and Patrimony wines looks at 2021 in a slightly different way. "There are a couple of ways to measure the climate, and one of them is how many days you reach over 38 degrees Celsius, or 100 degrees Fahrenheit," he explained, pointing out that at that temperature the vine may stop producing sugar and the fruit may burn, among other things.

“The more days you have over 100F, the richer the fruit, so the better year for us here is when we have fewer days reaching 100F. In 2021, here at 2,200 feet of altitude at our Daou vineyard, we had nine days with the temperature over 100F, versus 11 days for Napa Valley."

Bordeaux-inspired reds from Daou and Patrimony were some of the top scorers in our tasting.  And our report is full of outstanding-quality pure cabernet sauvignons and cabernet sauvignon-based blends. Check out Daou, Patrimony, My Favorite Neighbor, Sixmilebridge, Donati and others, but the Daou Cabernet Sauvignon Paso Robles Adelaida District Soul Of A Lion Estate 2020 and Patrimony Paso Robles Adelaida District Caves des Lions 2020 are particularly good. And My Favorite Neighbor Cabernet Sauvignon Paso Robles Parrish 2021 and My Favorite Neighbor Cabernet Sauvignon Paso Robles Moonsprings 2021 certainly stand out as great-value California cabernets.

IMPRESSIVE BLENDS

Of course, we also found many excellent Rhone reds and whites. Blends were very impressive to us. If you are a fan of earthy and muscular mourvedre-led blends, you should check out wines like the Tablas Creek Vineyard Paso Robles Adelaida District Panoplie 2021 and Epoch Estate Wines Paso Robles Willow Creek District Veracity 2019.

On the other hand, the Fulldraw Vineyards Paso Robles Hard Point 2021 and Ledge Paso Robles Willow Creek District Grenache Blend 2021 are generous expressions of grenache from western Paso, and there are more delicate grenaches like the Torrin Paso Robles Willow Creek District Seneschal 2020 and Epoch Estate Wines Paso Robles Willow Creek District Sensibility 2019. These provide you with more subtle and fragrant pinot-noir-like character.

We also took some time to visit a few small producers, who comprise an interesting trend in the region. Paso Robles is one of the few key wine regions in California where startups can buy grapes and vineyards and make wines.  Other areas such as Napa and Sonoma are just too expensive.

One good example of this in Paso is a young, passionate winemaker, Alex Baer, who used to work at Realm Cellars and Sine Qua Non but who now runs his own project, Allbaer. With much inspiration from his past experience, Alex makes wines using syrah, grenache, chardonnay and sangiovese.

Alex walked us through his newly planted vineyards in the northern part of Adelaida Hills AVA in September, and he said during the visit, "I don't have a baby, but making this gives me the idea of what that feeling is like when somebody says, oh, when you have a kid, you feel a little bit different."

We also visited Slamdance Koöperatieve, the small, hands-on producer run by Daniel Callan. We tasted his second release, the Slamdance Koöperatieve Central Coast 2021, and the wine shows a pristine, ethereal character. His project is only two years old and is still tiny, but its existence is already a powerful hint of what Paso can do. And Slamdance already has quite a following in the United States.

And yes, the odd-numbered years seem to be creating another success with Paso’s current vintage. "We're super delayed, and so I love it,” Asseo said about 2023 during our visit.

“It's slow this year, super slow ... even if harvest runs until the beginning of November. So it is total paradise because we can wait for a perfect moment, and we have no rest, no rush, no stress."

– Reporting from Associate Editor Andrii Stetsiuk 

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