A trip to Paso is never complete without a Tin City day. This is a gathering of some experimental wine makers and some small producers, often from the best vineyards in Paso. These are the people who don’t own their own vineyards; instead, they source their grapes from other places. There is a really interesting documentary/commercial about it free on Amazon Prime.

Our first stop may be my favorite wine in all of Paso. It is excellent. The most important cult-wine out of Paso is arguably Saxum. Most of the Saxum wines come from the James Berry and G2 vineyard, and so do most of Turtle Rock’s. Don Burns is an assistant at Saxum and has been friends with Justin Smith his whole life. Burns’ winery is newer and smaller.

We were lucky enough to have his charming wife, Claudia, as our wine host on what was supposed to be a blustery day but turned out gorgeous. (I have extraordinary luck with weather almost all the time.) The wines were quite the big start to the day and nothing short of sensational.

We didn’t go to anyplace we hadn’t been before in Tin City. We did go back to our favorites, and some of the ones we order from most often, so stop two was Jacob Toft and a tasting with Fizzell… We last tasted with him three years ago. The story in Tin City was different than it had been at the other wineries. The other vineyards mentioned that COVID really hadn’t put a hurt on their profits. In fact, many of them had the best years they had ever had. Tin City was a different story. These smaller producers need the foot traffic and on-site buyers, so being shut down for three months hurt them quite a bit.

One of the main things for Jacob is diversification. He sources from the best vineyards all over the central coast and does a variety of fantastic wines. He never wants to own a vineyard. He wants to stick to being a fantastic winemaker with relationships with some of the best vineyards. We’ve never been disappointed by a Jacob Toft wine or the experience at the winery.

Since we’ve been before and buy from them quite a bit, we had the privilege of trying some of the back vintages, too. I’m not even sure how many wines we tried, sharing some, having some one our own. I do know we bought half a case. We had agreed to buying one case total before we went… Well, we bought TWO cases total… I’m not sure where we’re going to put it… I guess we need to get to drinking!

We had another appointment in about half an hour. so we ducked into McPhee’s Canteen to split an awesome lamb burger before ending our wine trip at Desparada.

The winemaker at Desparada is the wife of the winemaker at Herman Story. She uses different grapes from many of the same vineyards, so it’s fun to see how they can be treated differently by two different styles. There was a rowdy group next to use that had a few too many spirits at Wineshine before making their way in, but it was still a good time with tasty grapes.

We headed back to the apartment after to prepare for our final dinner at La Cosecha. We had stopped by in the past for appetizers or craft cocktails, both of which were excellent, but we wanted to have a meal. La Cosecha is the sister restaurant to Il Cortille, one of the more popular fine dining restaurants in Paso Robles. Both have the same owner and the same fantastic chef. Il Cortille is Italian La Cosecha is Latin inspired. All of the restaurants are currently requiring reservations and allowed only 25% indoor seating. We were happy to sit outside in a lovely parklette. We were MOSTLY wined out (although we did push through and have a glass each at dinner – ha-) but we started with cocktails, a bone marrow appetizer, ceviche, and a beet salad and finished up with the paella of the day. Such a great grand finale!

Then, it was time to go back and prepare for the two hour and forty minute drive back to the airport at 6 AM the next morning. The drive back feels like it takes FOREVER. This time, however, the flight was direct. (Thank goodness no Denver… huge snowstorm there!) And now… that’s the end of the blogs. (For the very interested our first trip is here. Our second trip is here.)

We’re thinking our next wine destination may be Washington sometime this summer. It was fantastic to have this break from life in the middle of the year and Paso, as always, was amazing.