That weird, foreshortened, dumpy image in the fun house mirror turns out to be me. In the next panel, I appear enormously long, topped with a tiny ball of a head, but in the final mirror, I am gorgeously slim, like a pencil, so I linger there to admire that impossibly alluring image.
This fun house isn't in an amusement park. It stands in a thicket of plants outside the tasting room of Clautiere Vineyard in Paso Robles, Calif., on the Central Coast. The tasting room is just as much fun. It's stocked with outlandish wigs for visitors to don so that sampling wine at Clautiere is like dolling up for a costume party.
This doesn't mean that the wines aren't serious. It's just that some Paso Robles winemakers favor a fresh, breezy approach that makes wine anything but intimidating.
Boo Boy Red from the Midlife Crisis Winery guarantees a giggle. Four Vines Winery hands out "Biker" tattoos to advertise its Biker Zinfandel. I don't know whether to cry or laugh at Harrys Sweet Tears Verdelho from Fralich Vineyard. And I can't even pronounce the Irish names on Mat Garretson's labels. But who cares, when the wines inside are so good.
Paso Robles has boomed from a handful of vineyards to 170 bonded wineries spread over an AVA (American Viticultural Area) that encompasses 1,000 square miles. And it's still growing. For more information, click here to visit the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance.
There's talk of breaking this huge area up into nine or 10 appellations. This makes sense, because there's enough variety in soils, rainfall and microclimates to make your head spin.
Rainfall ranges from 8 inches annually in the eastern part of the region to 45 inches in the west. Some of that fell, hampering the grape harvest, when I was there. An electrical storm at night was so fierce that I dreamed a mechanical harvester was crashing through my lodgings.
In a single day, night and day temperatures can vary by 50 degrees. At the low end, it's really cold. In October, I shivered under two quilts even though wrapped in a thick terry robe.
The region is so vast that in a week I could reach only a handful of wineries. Some were in rolling, oak-studded terrain far to the west, others along back roads toward the east, and a few along Highway 46, the main drag of the region. If you're in town without a car, you can at least get to Anglim Winery's tasting room by the railroad tracks.
Paso Robles is known for Rhone wines and Rhone blends, but as much Cabernet Sauvignon is planted in the region as in all of the Napa Valley. Cabernet, Syrah and Merlot make up two-thirds of the vines planted, but Zinfandel is so important there's an annual Zinfandel festival in March.
Super serious wineries include Windward, which makes Pinot Noir as if in Burgundy. Stephan Asseo of L'Aventure was born in Paris, started his wine career in Bordeaux and now specializes in Rhone varietals and Rhone-Bordeaux blends.
Tablas Creek is a joint venture between Chateau Beaucastel of Chateauneuf-du-Pape in the Rhone Valley and American importer Robert Hass. Its Rhone wine vines came from French clones, and the winery propagates Rhone cuttings for other winemakers. If you visit the tasting room, you might find a few for sale. Tablas Creek Marsanne and Grenache Blanc vines now grow along a fence in my yard.
Tasting room fees range from $3 to sample six wines at Peachy Canyon to $15 if you want to taste certain reserve wines at Anglim. General tasting at Anglim is free, and region pioneer Gary Eberle has always believed in free samples.
Tasting rooms range from Peachy Canyon's quaint 100-year-old schoolhouse to Robert Hall's grand structure with imposing caves and a central waterway that made me think of Mogul palaces in northern India.
The wines can be hard to get. Small producers tend to sell only at their tasting rooms or through web sites, which is a good reason to go to Paso. Not only can you find pleasing wines, but the region still has the countrylike, pioneer enthusiasm that is just a memory in that high-flying wine district to the south, Santa Barbara County.
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