         Our first stop of the day! This was a Dave M. find... |
 Mat Garretson, the winemaker was pouring that day... He specializes in Rhone varietals, and actually is the founder of Hospice du Rhone... The wines were really yummy, and the labels quite distinctive... Highly recommended... |
 We had problems finding Garretson at first - it was in a strip mall with a bunch of car dealerships... FYI - Eagle Creek is right next to Garretson... |
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 Where to go next? |
 EOS was our next stop... One of the bigger producers in the area, it also featured a racecar museum of sorts... The wines, unfortunately, were disappointing... |
 Mmmm... Vines... The view from Meridian, another big producer... |
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 Their grounds were very pretty... |
 Ahh, L'Aventure... To get to L'Aventure, we had to go up this long gravel & dirt road, over a cattle guard, and through a private gate... It was quite bizarre... Beautiful, but bizarre... |
 Group photo! Dave, myself & Dan... |
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 The view from L'Aventure... Their wines were quite interesting... They specialize in blends, namely Bordeaux meets Rhone meets Cali... Their Optimus blend (cab, syrah, petit verdot and zin) was really good... So was their zinfandel... The guy manning the tasting room that day was really quite knowedgable - he works at Bonny Doon during the week, and L'Aventure on weekends... |
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 As I said... |
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 Happy grapes... Unfortunately, they were protected... Kinda bizarre, but most of the vineyards in Paso Robles were fenced off (electrified too!)... |
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 The next morning, the first place we went to was Turley... Yes, the winemaker here, Larry Turley, is related to the Helen Turley (of Marcassin)... They have some amazing zins... |
 On the way to Linne Calodo... |
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 And here we are! Another winemaker specialzing in Rhones... We got the feeling that the winemaker, Matt Trevisan, is quite into the technical aspects of winemaking... Among others, we tasted two different years of his Cherry red - very different... The 2000 is especially yummy though... |
 This one Dan actually took... The dog's name is Bear... |
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 Pretty hill... The yellow is actually lots of little flowers... |
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 Happy car! |
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 Last stop of the day, Justin... Funny thing is, the winemaker from Justin dropped off a bottle or two of their wine to the winemaker at Linne Calodo while we were there... He rode in on a Harley... |
 The wines were were ok... We actually also had lunch here - they have a small B&B and restaurant on premises... The food was ok, but service was very slow... Cool thing - they have three dogs running around, Francois inside and two labs(?) outside... |
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