Paso Robles Dials Up the Heat on Drinkability: 2022 Annual Report

While tasting our way through more than 350 wines from Paso Robles this year, one thing became eminently clear: high alcohol is no obstacle for winemakers aiming to deliver fresh and composed wines.

Although 15-percent-alcohol bottles might strike you as head-wallopers, they actually represent restrained normality for Paso Robles, where bountiful sugar ripeness and thus generous alcohol in the final wines don’t necessarily mean excessive heat or clumsy expressiveness. After all, the leading producers of Paso Robles have long had the know-how to achieve balance in their sun-drenched wines regardless of how high alcohol levels climb.

But there is also a talented, adventurous and often younger cohort in Paso Robles forging its own winemaking path in seeking freshness and drinkability through lower-alcohol wines, using non-conventional grapes while bringing out the best of Paso’s myriad terroirs. While cabernets and Rhone varieties take up most of the vineyards in Paso, about 60 grape varieties in total can be found here, lifting Paso’s dynamic winemaking scene to new levels with its diversity and potential, whatever the alcohol levels.

Paso Robles today boasts more than 16,500 hectares of vines in its 11 sub-AVA districts. The rolling vineyards in western Paso benefit from the shield provided by the Santa Lucia Mountains, with the oceanic breezes and fog that flow from Morro Bay helping to keep them cool. Templeton Gap District, Willow Creek District, El Pomar District and Adelaida District are among the coolest AVAs in Paso, with the deep calcareous soils, cool nights and wide diurnal temperature range crucial factors in boosting acidity and phenolics, which are vital to offsetting high alcohol.

"The soils are so calcium rich that it helps vines block the uptake of potassium, and potassium degrades acid, so you get fresh, natural acid," said winemaker Guillaume Fabre of Clos Solene, who touted fresh acidity as Paso’s main calling card. While some producers still add acid, most of Paso’s high-quality wines go without this step because there is usually more than enough natural acidity to keep them bright and vivid.

The wines made in 2020 by Fabre, a native of France’s Languedoc-Roussillon region,  are great examples – and he pulled off such a feat of excellence despite heat spikes in late August and the challenge of smoke from wildfires to the north. His family winery is named after his beloved wife and focuses on varietals from Rhone and southern France. A separate project by Fabre, Benom Wines, which he runs with his brother Arnaud in Tin City, often mixes cabernet sauvignon with Rhone varieties.

One of the top wines we tasted from Fabre this year was the Clos Solene Paso Robles Hommage a Nos Pairs Reserve 2020, a blend of 96 percent syrah, 2 percent grenache and 2 percent viognier, with the personality of the syrah, from Paso’s Willow Creek District, shining through. Many of the syrah and viognier plantings in the Clos Solene vineyard are trained to teepee trellises to create more shade, while grenache is often trained to bush vines.

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For Eric Jensen of Booker Vineyard, the preternatural acidity that springs naturally from the terroir is exactly why they make wines in Paso. The winery was sold to Constellation Group in 2021 along with Jensen's My Favorite Neighbor and Harvey and Harriet wine labels, the latter of which sources fruit beyond Paso in San Luis Obispo and delivers outstanding quality in the $30 price range. Jensen remained as winemaker for Booker, My Favorite Neighbor and Harvey and Harriet after the sale.

But Jensen sees his affordable wines as an anomaly when compared with wines from  Napa. "I love Napa, but I think it is becoming a fashion show where many of the owners, not winemakers, have lost their way, and it is no longer about trying to deliver the best wines possible at a good price,” he said.

He’s also not exactly enamored with the stylistic choices of some Napa winemakers. “There are a lot of concentrated, syrupy wines that got bled off from the juice with no acid,” he said. “Winemakers should take the responsibility of making more drinkable wines.”

"When you get older, you just can't drink those wines anymore," he explained, adding that he believes a truly great wine should be drinkable immediately but also delicious in 20 years.

PASO'S GREATEST GIFT

Jensen's neighbor, Stephan Asseo of L' Aventure in Willow Creek District (the inspiration for Jensen’s My Favorite Neighbor wine) believes acid is a gift in Paso and that winemakers should not overreact when alcohol levels exceed what are considered normal levels.

Ultimately, said Asseo, who is also a native of France, it’s essential for producers to remember that they’re making Paso wines in Paso, not French wines: "I learned something after my 25 years in Bordeaux, which is you need to make wines of your place, and I see so many people coming here who are intimidated by 15 percent or 16 percent alcohol, and they fall into a trap where they try to harvest very early to make wines with lower alcohol. But in the end, the wines are green.”

Asseo underscored the importance of looking at polyphenolic maturity before harvest, and not just at Brix levels. And thanks to the cool nights in Willow Creek District, L' Aventure generally harvests around two weeks later than Chateauneuf-du-Pape in France, he said. "To achieve the maturity of polyphenols, we need to keep the fruit longer on the vines because of the cool nights here that generate high acidity. Of course, you also have to think about your yeast, and most yeast will die at 16 percent alcohol, but you must put everything into context.”

Asseo settled in Paso around 25 years ago and established L'Aventure Winery after selling Chateau Fleur Cardinale in Saint-Emilion, where he was put off by the rigid AOC regulations. His signature blend of syrah, cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot is his best response as to why he left Saint-Emilion, where such combinations can’t even be attempted.

Both his Optimus and Estate Cuvée are blends of the three varieties, while Côte a Côte is a grenache-syrah-mourvedre blend that pays tribute to Chateauneuf-du-Pape. With outstanding balance, you barely feel the heat in these deep and opulent yet fresh and racy reds.

"For me, the charm of Paso is that it's more open-minded here, and people can do what they want. We are more product-driven than marketing-driven,” he said, alluding to the unforgiving Napa scene, where outside investment in several business sectors has helped fuel outsize growth in land prices, leading to even more tension and competitiveness among producers to turn a profit.

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It's no wonder that more winemakers from Napa are turning to Paso’s possibilities, and not just for the cheaper land prices. Duckhorn, whose main winery is based in Napa’s St. Helena, recently acquired a vineyard in Paso's San Miguel District AVA planted to cabernet sauvignon, and a few notable Napa winemakers, such as Juan Mercado from Realm Cellars and Helen Keplinger of Keplinger Wines, have jumped onto the Paso bandwagon, attracted to the region’s diversity, particularly in regard to Rhone varieties.

The high percentage of Rhone-variety wines that we rated over 93 points in this report proves their potential in Paso, especially when it comes to syrah, which is not as peppery as we have found elsewhere and often take on a bacon-fat character with lots of grilled Mediterranean herbs.

The downside for some of these wines, particularly those with a lot of grenache, is indeed the alcohol, because when not tucked up and balanced it jumps out with heat at the finish, creating a glycerous mouthfeel.

While Rhone varieties comprise about 15 percent of Paso vineyards, cabernet is still king, growing steadily from roughly 40 percent of vineyards 10 years ago to slightly over half of the Paso's current plantings. Although Paso has a wide range of terroirs, the amount of calcium-rich, calcareous clay soils is second to none, which is what Daniel Daou of the Daou Family Estates seeks for his cabernets and Bordeaux varieties in Adelaida District, where the climate is comparable to northern Napa. His flagship cabernet, Patrimony, was first made in 2013 as a “fun” wine from a few rows of his best-performing vines. Today, it is a meticulous selection of vines with the highest phenolics from the beautifully rolling Daou vineyards.

For the 2019 vintage, Patrimony Paso Robles Adelaida District Caves des Lions 2019 is a laudable effort that epitomizes what cabernet can be in Paso, delivering superb depth, balance, texture and fine-quality tannins to the palate. It is a safe and premium bet for the Paso cabernet blend (roughly one-half cabernet sauvignon and one-half cabernet franc) that proves one plus one can often surpass two. A few other cabernet sauvignons that stood out in our Paso tastings were from Parrish, My Favorite Neighbor, The Farm Winery and Niner Wine Estate.

LOCKING IN DRINKABILITY

The other side of Paso's story is about how some adventurous yet serious winemakers are taking the less-traveled road of making wines with lower alcohol and great drinkability. These often come from lesser-known grape varieties and fruit from cooler sub-AVAs. Some even go beyond Paso and look to the San Benito County AVA or York Mountain AVA, where the climate is cool enough to deliver exciting results even with grapes like pinot noir.

Molly Lonborg, who works for Alta Colina, is one of them. Her Little Soul Pinot Noir York Mountain Carbonic 2021 is a highly drinkable pinot that shows the freshness in the small AVA that neighbors Paso Robles. I also loved the wines from Daniel Callan, a young winemaker at Thacher Winery who delivered impressive offerings from grapes like valdiguie (also known as Napa gamay) and cinsault (aka black malvoisie). His sideline project, Slamdance Koöperatieve Wines, blends the pair along with a 20 percent addition of negrette from the San Benito AVA to make the Slamdance Koöperatieve Central Coast 2020, which has the delivery of natural wine with its superb drinkability.

Such classic, regional California wines recall the old generic wine types that were the staple of the wine industry in the state before Prohibition – wines that were often passed off as "California Burgundy" or "California Claret" but were, in fact, blends of such workhorse grape varieties. Once so important, many of these varieties were lost due to the economic hardships of the times and Prohibition restrictions.

"For the younger generation of my age, I see a trend of moving away from the classic, fuller-bodied reds,” said Brian Farrell, a 31-year-old winemaker who kicked off his own project, Caelesta, in 2017. “It is a lot more about carbonic and whole clusters today, with the natural wine movement going on, too. The wines from younger winemakers are generally lighter in a more drink-me-now style.”

The movement toward more drinkable wines is also in play now at Tin City – a dynamic and evolving industrial park tucked away in the southern outskirts of Paso, a 15-minute drive from downtown, where winemakers, their friends and wine lovers come together to produce wines, craft beers, ciders, small-batch spirits and even olive oils.

It is where small boutique producers like Concur, Emercy, Giornata and Desparada surprised me with sui generis offerings – from petite sirah, tempranillo and graciano (once thought of as mourvedre) to Italian varieties, sauvignon blanc and orange wines.

If this is Paso’s future – people sharing knowledge, partying together and cheering each other with fun and drinkable wines – then the next generation is in great hands.

– Zekun Shuai, Senior Editor