Central Coast -Day 1

We are here in our future home of the Central Coast. For those that don’t know where CC is it is three hours north of Los Angeles and three hours south of San Francisco. This year we flew into LAX rented a car and hit the road north. Our first day here we hit the road running and hit a few wineries. What I have decided to do in these blogs is present information about each winery. This information will hopefully give a heads up to anyone visiting. I will discuss the tasting costs, the parking area ( because anyone who travels to this area for wine hunts shade like their life depends on it)  and if we purchased anything.  Additionally I’ll show some pictures of the tasting room

Laetitia  Winery is located in Arroyo 

Tasting fee: 5 wines $10 waived with purchase. The tasting room was modern looking with beautiful  dark marble tasting bar. People very friendly and helpful. Laetitia offers 6  sparkling wines and  17 additional wines to choose from. They are Open daily 11-5. They had nice picnic benches to enjoy their wine   There was very little shade in this parking lot   We did not make any purchases here.

Sextant Winery

Tasting fee: $10 per tasting but you get to keep the Riedel glass. Additionally, fee is waived with purchase.  Sextant has two tasting rooms. This one is a quaint country store and is in Arroyo Grande.  The other, in Paso Robles, is the complete opposite of the spectrum, and is very modern.  The tasting room and gourmet deli, in Arroyo, are open Monday- Friday 10-4. There is a few tables outside to enjoy the food or wine. There are some trees in the lot that provide shade for parking. 

Purchased two 2010 Passage and two 2012 Edna Valley Chardonnay. 

Edna Valley Vineyard

Tasting Fee: regular for $10 or Reserve for $15. There was no mention of fee being waived with purchase.  They are open daily 10-5.  There is no shade trees in the parking lot.  We did not make any purchases. 

Wolff Vineyards

Tasting fee: $8 and is waived with a purchase.  They are open daily 10-5.  There are shaded tables outside for enjoying their wine and it looked like they can hold events in a covered outside area that had picnic benches. My favorite part- we were greeted by one of their winery dogs.  Her name is Daisy. 

There are no shade trees for parking. We did not make any purchases. 

Baileyana 

Tasting fee: traditional tasting $8 Reserve tasting $12. Tasting fee is waived with a purchase.  There are 6 different labels under this one producer: Zocker, Tangent, Trenza, Cadre, Baileyana, True Myth (only Chardonnay )They are open daily 10-5.  There are tables outside along with Bocci courts. There are some parking spaces with shade. We did not make any purchases. 

Chamisal

Tasting fee: Classic flight $15 complimentary tasting with $48 purchase and the Estate Flight $25 complimentary with $75 purchase. The tasting is mostly Pinot and Chardonnay. There are two tasting patio areas depending on which tasting you choose ( you are separated by which tasting you choose). We tasted inside, so I can not say what would happen if you tried to go to the reserve tasting patio in back if you were doing the classic tasting. There was no shade in the parking lot. We made no purchases. 

Talley Vineyards

Tasting fee: core flight $8 and the distinctive tasting is $15.  Fee is waived with purchase.  They are open daily 10:30-4:30.   Beautiful courtyard with fountain and tables to sit at before entrance. There are two parking areas. One closer to actual tasting room has more shade. The further one also has some shade. We purchased one 2011 Bishops Peak Petite Sirah.  The fruit for this Petite Sirah comes from the east side of Paso Robles.  

We ended the night at Rooster Creek Tavern in downtown Arroyo Grande. We absolutely love this place. Several local beers on tap and a great happy hour.