Crowds gather for Wine Festival
The wine flowed freely in downtown Paso Robles as the Wine Festival — a marquee event for the Paso Robles wine region — made its much-anticipated return to Downtown City Park on Saturday.
Now in its 27th year, the Paso Robles Wine Festival is a chance for thousands of wine enthusiasts — both local and tourists alike — to discover and explore the diversity and distinctive flavors of the Paso Robles American Viticultural Area, which has grown in both prominence and distinction in recent years to establish itself as the fastest growing wine region in California.
While wine producers have been gearing up for the popular festival for months, the Wine Fest kicked off in earnest on Friday with specialty activities at more than 110 area wineries, ranging from sumptuous winemaker dinners and vineyard tours to live entertainment and, of course, wine tasting. Friday night also featured a new element to the Paso Robles Wine Festival, the first ever Wine Country Auction, featuring wine and lifestyle packages not available for sale elsewhere.
“Every year we try to do something new and feed more new life into [the Paso Robles Wine Festival],” said Chris Taranto, communications manager with the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance.
The Wine County Auction kicked off on Friday with a live auction on the steps of the Carnegie Library and a silent auction continued into the next day at the newly opened Studios on the Park, the city’s first and only open artist studio. Those auction lots were on display right alongside the work of local artists at the studio. Art and wine are a natural fit, said Anne Laddon, Studios on the Park founder.
“The wine business is what drives the economy here in Paso and it has changed the whole texture of our community in the last 10 years, so it just made sense to me that people who appreciate the art of winemaking and wine tasting are the same types of people that appreciate fine arts,” she said. “I thought that the community was ready for an introduction to the visual arts here.”
Saturday also marked the start of the Wine Festival Grand Tasting, featuring the flavors of 93 area wineries, a dozen local chefs and local artisan producers. More than wine tasting, the event also offered thousands of consumers a chance to sample some local epicurean offerings from regional food masters. The food element was expanded this year to meet popular demand of consumers and included Artisan Alley, local food vendors and an outdoor kitchen, featuring demonstrations by local chefs Evan Treadwell of Lido restaurant in Pismo Beach, Maegen Loring of Park Restaurant in San Luis Obispo and Andre Averseng of Dining with André in Paso Robles.
While all aspects of the Wine Festival are meticulously planned, an unknown factor this year proved to be the economy.
Still, even in the midst of the worst economic climate in recent years, the Wine Festival seemed to be thriving. Taranto reported that advanced ticket sales were “amazing” and sales for Locals Only Passes were up from last year. Final ticket sale numbers will be determined later this week, but Taranto said that the PRWCA was aiming for something more than just ticket sales.
“Ticket sales or the amount of sales are not necessarily a measure of success for us, but rather the measure of success is the quality of the experience for the consumer but also for our wineries,” he said. “It is important for our wineries to be here because they are trying to reach the consumer.”
If activity in area tasting rooms were any indication of the matter, then the Paso Robles Wine Festival does just that. Over the three days that the Wine Festival is in full swing in Paso Robles, Ted Plemons, co-owner of Cass Vineyards and Winery, described the activity in his tasting room as “pandemonium.”
“But it’s all good stuff,” he added with a laugh. “Your wine is flying, people are talking and it is just wonderful fun and pandemonium.”
The 93 wineries at the grand tasting bring with them roughly 400 wines for tasting and will typically go through several cases of wine during the four-hour event. The Paso Robles Wine Festival allows those wineries to reach out to a whole new audience.
“What we get back is people learning about our brand but also we refer back the winery,” said Plemons, whose winery was also concurrently celebrating the release of its new Rosé-style blend, Oasis. “Our goal is to get them out tomorrow, which is a big day for us, so they can taste the rest of the line and then meet the chef and meet my partner. Our goal is to get them out there but also to get them to know more about us.”
Bride-to-be Christine Hayrapetian made her way up from Orange County with six of her closest friends to celebrate her bachelorette party at the Paso Robles Wine Festival. This was her second visit to the Wine Festival and she is now trying to make the trip a yearly tradition.
“I love the variety of the wines you can get, ranging from whites to reds to sweets to dries, and the way they taste,” she said of the wine region. “Every year there is a new harvest that comes out and the more you learn about them. As a wine lover, I just love tasting wines from different wineries.”
Adding her best friends to the blend only made the day all the more perfect.
“Usually it is a lot of fun to go out with girls and sip wine, talk, have a conversation and being in an ambience with unlimited wine tasting and possibilities, it is a day of fun,” Hayrapetian said of the Paso Robles Wine Festival Grand Tasting event on Saturday.
The Wine Festival attracts enthusiasts from around the country and has grown over the years to become California’s largest outdoor wine tasting. Taranto said the popularity of the event is likely due to a combination of the tranquil outdoor setting, the quality of the wines and the character of the wineries themselves.
“All of those things kind of come together much like in the wine world, like terroir, where it is the climate, it is the soil, it is all those elements,” he said. “It is the same thing as to why consumers are attracted to our region.”