All language subtitles for V.is.for.Vino.S01E03.Paso.Robles.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB

I'm here at Hearst Castle in San Luis Obispo County.

Hearst Castle was made

for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.

Have you seen Citizen Kane?

This was the inspiration over 80,000 square feet,

90 bedrooms, 90 bathrooms,

and did I mentioned 100 foot Neptune pool?

Pretty amazing.

What if you drive 40 miles inland from here,

you're gonna find the real
treasure of San Luis Obispo,

some killer Rhone-style wines.

We're going to Paso Robles,
and welcome to V is for Vino.

We're hanging out in downtown Paso Robles.

Paso Robles is part of San Luis Obispo County,

which is part of the Central Coast appellation

of California.

The Central Coast is actually really big

and encompasses everything from San Francisco

down to Santa Barbara.

But Paso Robles, AVA is
smack dab in the middle of it all.

While most of the wine regions in the Central Coast

tend to be fairly cool,

Paso Robles is the exception, it's hot here,

mostly because the Santa
Lucia Mountains shield the region

from the cool pacific ocean breeze.

The heat means a big heat loving grapes

like Syrah, Grenache, and Zinfandel do great here.

But it's only been recently that Paso has exploded

as a wine growing region.

It went from 20 wineries in 1990 to over 200 today.

So how do you pronounce it?

Robles? Robles?

Well, the city was actually named in Spanish

El Paso de Robles, which meant The Pass of the Oaks,

and eventually just got shorten to Paso Robles.

So if you were saying in Spanish, you'd say Robles,

but by that logic, you'd say Los Angeles

instead of Los Angeles.

So most people here called Paso Robles,

or you could just call it Paso

and save yourself the headache.

So why does this place make

such fantastic terroir driven, Rhone-style wines?

We're gonna find out.

But first, what the hell is terroir?

Terroir.

So what's with all these fancy, expensive vineyards,

why can't you just try and
grow wine in your own backyard?

Well, you can give it a shot.

Technically, all the great wine growing regions

are grown between these lines of latitude.

Anything in the middle is too hot.

And everything on top and bottom is too cold.

So you're thinking all right, I live in America,

I should be able to get it done.

Well, you don't have what the French call terroir.

That's why is this combination of elements,

the sunlight, the soil, the slope, the drainage,

the average rainfall, the irrigation,

and the million and one other factors

that make a wine region, a great wine region.

But most wine regions also have one other thing

that I call the X factor.

And it's that one thing that without it,

it couldn't make good grapes.

Take Napa, Napa has the Vaca Mountains to the east

that protect from the hot Central California,

and the Mayacamas to the west that protect

from the cool ocean breezes,

and you're left with this
nice regulated temperature

in the Napa Valley.

What about Mosel, Germany?

Now Mosel, Germany is one of my favorites

because it's way too cold to grow grapes,

but it's very famous for its Riesling,

is because the Mosel river that runs through it

reflects sunlight off of the river

and onto the vines that
are on the slopes of the river.

Otherwise, the grapes will never ripen.

So the next time, you're thinking about trying

to make wine in your backyard,

it's probably best to leave it to the pros.

What about Paso Robles?

What is its X factor?

Well, remember, I told you how hot it is here?

It's literally 100 degrees today, we're baking.

It would normally be way too hot for wine growth.

But there's wild temperature fluctuations

called diurnal shifts that
allow wine grapes to grow here,

maybe 100 now, but it'll be 40 to 50 degrees cooler

at night.

And what that does is allows
the grapes to ripen all day,

and then stop ripening in the evening,

and still have a nice long hang time

until September or October.

Now Cabernet Sauvignon
is still the number one grape

by the number is grown in Paso,

but nobody grows more Rhone varietals

in the new world than Paso Robles.

And this is because the
climate here is very similar

to the Rhone Valley in the southeast of France.

Well, what exactly is a Rhone blend?

Let's find out.

Today, we're gonna focus on
Southern Rhone-style blends.

Now the term Rhone blend is used to describe a wine

that's made in similar style to the wines

they make in a place in the southeast of France

called the Rhone Valley.

And unlike most places in the planet

to focus on one grape, maybe 100% Pinot Noir

or 100% Chardonnay, the
Rhone Valley is all about blending.

Why use one grape when you can use three

or five or even 10?

You're actually allowed to use up to two 22 grapes

in the Rhone Valley itself.

White Rhone blends are full of grapes,

you may not be too familiar with Grenache Blanc,

Marsanne, Roussanne, Viognier, Picpoul,

and some other grapes thrown in for good measure.

They're usually apricots and peachy,

perfumy and aromatic and floral.

And if they have any oak on them,

maybe some lemon curd or some vanilla,

but winemakers have to
be careful when they harvest,

and how much oak they use,

because they don't have a lot of natural acidity.

So they need to be careful

to preserve the acidity they do have.

When they're done right, they're similar

to a lush tropical Chardonnay.

GSM, it's a common abbreviation for Red Rhone Blends,

and it stands for Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre.

These wines take full advantage of the heat

that Paso and Rhone tend to offer

big, bold, high alcohol wines.

Think cherry and cassis flavors,

maybe lavender, floral and herbs.

But also some spice notes and some gamy notes

from the Syrah.

You can think of it like a three-piece band.

Grenache is the lead singer and guitarist

and contribute to most of the alcohol

and red fruit flavors.

Syrah is the bass, contributes
to the lower fruit flavors

like blackberry and maybe some gamey notes

and some spice notes.

And then the Mourvedre hangs in the back,

it's the drums, it contributes to the finish

and the tannin structure.

Now blending is great for a winemaker

because it allows you to not
only have some say in the line,

but to take advantage of the different grapes

in different years.

If it's a warm year, you might use more Grenache,

which loves the heat.

If it's a cooler year, maybe a little more Syrah,

but all this means, you better have a winemaker

who knows what he's doing.

I think I got just the one.

Thanks for having us out.

You're welcome.

So tell us a little bit about the story of Tablas

and these these vineyards?

Two families, the Perrin family,

the other family being an American family,

the Haas family, Robert Haas.

And they were just in California selling wine

and asking the question,

everything here is Cabernet and Chardonnay,

why is there no Rhone varietals here?

This is perfect for that, the weather, the climate

is so much similar to where we are,

we should do something, and they search California

up and down West Coast, really up and down,

looking for the ultimate spot to do this product.

So they're looking for limestone soils,

they were looking for enough
sunshine to ripe Mourvedre,

and they found it here.

Can you tell me a little bit about your story

how you got into wine making?

Yeah, I was in the restaurant industry

while I was working in that business

just grew a passion for wine
and read a lot about wine,

and decided I wanted to do a year in a small winery.

I can read but I don't understand it so well.

Anything as well as actually
physically get my hands in it,

got a job at a winery down the street,

started doing that in 91 and just loved it.

And then you came over here,

and you've been here pretty
much since the beginning.

Yeah, I did a year in France working

in the vineyards and winery at Beaucastel.

And then move back here in July of 98,

and I've been here ever since.

Do you have a nickname around here,

like father of Tablas or something like that?

I haven't heard it, but I'm sure there is one.

Weird guy that wanders around.

What is your philosophy behind the style of wines

that you make your Tablas?

It's really simple, that question.

I mean, how I see it I was tasked

when I got here with the job of growing grapes

and making wines the best
demonstrate a sense of place.

They bought this property specifically

because they felt it was unique.

The limestone soil
particularly is incredibly unique

within California, it's rare, it's hard to find.

And so the goal is let's produce wines

that is clear a reflection of this place

is we can possibly make.

So Farming organically now,
we're moving into biodynamics,

an introduction of animals in the vineyard,

more diversity just trying to leave this place

in a better state than we found it.

And then when we get to the winery,

again, it's very traditional, we don't use much new oak,

everything is fermented on native yeast,

we don't inoculate anything.

And that's all in an attempt to display

this beautiful, incredible
piece of land that we have here.

And for a winemaker, who sounds like

you wanna be very hands off,

you have to use a lot of decisions to make

when it comes to the blending process.

So what happens is that we sit down at a table,

and we'll sit and we'll taste every single lot

that we have in our cellar blend.

And we'll make ratings on the individual lots

of individual varietals

from individual blocks, et cetera, et cetera.

And from those tastings, we'll go back,

and we'll put together some potential blends

of you know, okay, and then
we taste three or four versions

of those blend.

And then we're saying okay, order preference,

which ones you like, and we keep going until

we all agree that this is the one.

So sometimes it can be a couple of days,

sometimes it can be a couple of weeks.

There have been times when we've just packed it up

and gone home and come back to it a month later.

And you live on property right?

I do, my family, my kids grew up here.

It's home for us.

I was here the day the first vine went in the ground

just as a nosy neighbor and now as an employee.

Yeah, we'll be harvesting this stuff

in late September, early October.

Clusters are gonna tighten up,

and then we'll start seeing the turn of color.

And this time of year is nerve-racking

because you're hoping everything keeps going

in the right direction and you get to the end of it

and you're tired of getting up at four in the morning

and staying up till late
eight at night in the winery

and want it to be over.

But it's always the most exciting thing

because that's where the season is.

I wanted to get to know more
about the biodynamic farming

and the use of the animals in the vineyard.

So for that, I went to Nathan,

Tablas Creek's own personal shepherd.

This is a herd of sheep, Tablas Creek's.

There's about 200 of them right now.

The Guardian animals, Fiona and Dottie, the donkeys.

Fiona doesn't like me, I don't like you either Fiona.

And then if you look in the back,

you can see the alpacas
with the funny-looking necks.

I see him.

They just got sheared, so don't be too hard on him.

They don't always look that bad.

So the herd started is kind of a novelty,

but now that we've gone into biodynamics,

and we're becoming certified biodynamic,

it's gonna be a big part of
building soil in the vineyard.

And they'll graze in between
the vines all winter long

and keeping the weeds down, cutting back mow passes,

fertilizing was at 240 cubic feet of manure

that we didn't buy, that we didn't truck here

using fuel and all the other
costs of running equipment.

They're putting compost on the ground for us

without us having to spread
it with tractors and trucks.

The final byproduct is we have lamb for sale,

we'll be harvesting 20, 30, 40 lambs,

and then we distribute
them out to local restaurants.

But they're getting organic biodynamic,

no hormones, no antibiotics.

My big argument not everybody,

but my big argument is the more animals

we can get back on the land properly managed,

properly managed not the valley,

I'm not talking about like feedlots,

and creating methane and all that.

But properly manage animals on the livestock

can put carbon back in the
soil, and keep it there forever.

That's kind of what I'm
passionate about is using them to,

you know save the planet in a small way.

This is like a pig version of like Baywatch.

Tablas Creek is equally
owned and run by two families.

One of the families is my family.

My dad is Robert Haas.

He was an importer who started
the company Vineyard Brands.

He is been importing wine since the 1950s.

The other family is the Perrin family

from Chateau de Beaucastel in Chateauneuf-du-Pape

in the south of France, whose
wines my dad introduced it

to the US market in the 1960s,

and with whom he became friends.

There were three things that they were looking for

that led them to Paso.

So the first thing they were looking for

was the right kind of climate,

which meant hot enough and sunny enough to ripen

some of the latest ripening grapes in France.

But moderated enough so
that the earlier Rhone varieties

like Syrah and Viognier didn't go flabby.

Second thing, we were
looking for was enough rainfall

to dry farm.

And then the third thing that we were looking

for was limestone.

Wow, and so between those three,

you're left with a perfect place

to recreate chateauneuf-du-pape.

Yeah, at least, I mean, - it is dry?

And our goal isn't to recreate it exactly.

But our goal is to use kinda
the same palette of flavors

and then have those flavors
express this particular plan.

So the Cotes de Tablas Blanc is our chance

to show off Viognier.

So Viognier is one of the classic grapes

of the Rhone Valley, but in a warm climate in like

in the Southern Rhone or like in Paso Robles.

It's usually used as a blending
grape but in a lead role.

So the Viognier is that floral juiciness,

the Grenache Blanc is citrusy, brights, minerally,

Marsanne is restraint kind of melon,

little bit of honey pretty, and
then Rousanne is structure.

Yeah, right away just that floral perfumey.

The nice thing about working with Rhone grapes

is that they're meant to be blended with one another.

Each of them brings a different
strength to the table now.

So you can allow a grape like Viognier to show off

what's at great without having
a little bits of weaknesses.

Viognier is one of my favorite grapes

that I feel like nobody does, right?

And I don't say that about you guys so Cheers to that.

So the Cote de Tablas is our
chance to lead with Grenache.

So Grenache is another the classic grape

of the Southern Rhone.

It accounts for something like 60% of the acreage

in the southern Rhone Valley.

And you can understand, why?

It's a grape which is juicy,

it's got good acids to balance that juiciness.

It shows off herbs and spices in a really nice way.

If it has a weakness,

it's that it can be a little simple on its own,

it's not very dark in color.

And so the classic blending
partner for Grenache is Syrah,

it's dark, savory, spicy tannic,

but usually not very friendly.

So you can think of Grenache
is providing friendliness

for Syrah and Syrah is providing
seriousness for Grenache.

So the Cote de Tablas is always led by Grenache

with Syrah as the number two,

and then smaller amounts of
Counoise which has great acidity

and just brings everything into focus,

Mourvedre for this little
bit of wild earthy darkness.

The thing that I like about Rhone blends in general

is that they're not only one thing,

it's not a wine which is one dimensional at all.

It's a wine that has fruit, and it has Earth,

and it has spice, and it has meat, and it has herbs

bark and has flowers.

I mean you can keep digging.

You can keep digging,

all right, it makes you wanna keep coming back

for a second sip.

Even in a in a climate is
warm is here, this feels fresh.

People often pay more
attention to how hot the days get

in Paso Robles than they
do to how cold the nights are.

And the fact that you can pick the same grapes

at the same sugar levels that you get

in the Rhone Valley with
higher acids in Paso Robles

because the nights are so cold.

Well, thank you so much for taking us on this tour.

You are welcome.

Absolutely. Cheers.

Cheers.

Welcome to the "V is for Vino" Nerd Lab,

we take complicated wine
topics and make them simple.

Today, we're talking about acid.

So what is acid?

Well, it's one of the five major components of wine.

It's a compound in the grapes, tartaric, malic,

and citric acid that gives
wine a sourness or tartness,

but it's really important to wine too.

It also gives wine the
liveliness to pizzazz or a pop.

Some things that have acid naturally, lemons,

vinegar has a lot of acids,

and things that have very low acid, milk, avocados.

Now acid is a direct consequence of climate.

Cooler climate grapes tend to have more acid

than warm climate.

And this is because it has an inverse relationship

with ripeness, the riper a grape gets,

the more acid goes down.

So as the sugar goes up, the acid goes down,

you can think of it like a banana,

this green banana is going to have more acid

not so much sugar, whereas
this right banana that's brown,

it's gonna have way too much sugar.

And the key for a winemaker
is to find that perfect blend

right in the middle where you get

a perfectly ripe grape or banana.

It's also very similar to good lemonade,

lemonade is all about the balance

between the citric acid in the lemon juice

and the sugar that you've put in.

So we start with our water,
and we'll put in our lemon juice

just to get started.

Now adding just lemon juice,

this is going to be obviously very sour,

you have no sugar to balance it out.

And these are like grapes that have been

on the vine too little,

they're going to be very, very acidic.

It's not gonna taste very good,

but if you add a little sugar,

and these will be like grapes that are on the vine

that have developed a little bit more,

you're gonna find that perfect balance

between the acid and the sugar.

It's perfect lemonade, and that's just like a grape

and has had the proper
amount of hang time on the vine.

And now we add more sugar.

This is gonna be like a grape
that has too much hang time.

It's going to be very low on acid,

and it's not gonna have any pop.

It's gonna be very flat.

Now the key to a winemaker is
to pick at the perfect moment.

A winemaker can't just add sugar down the road.

He has to pick at the right moment

when the acid and the sugar are in perfect balance.

And this is assuming there's a perfect moment at all.

In some years, the weather won't be good enough

and the grapes won't ripen enough,

and in other years, they'll ripen too quickly,

and you'll be forced to pick them too early

before everything else in the grape has developed.

I hope you enjoyed this Nerd Lab on acid

and keep geeking out.

I headed back into town to
meet the husband and wife team

behind a restaurant that's now an institution

in downtown Paso.

Welcome to Artisan.

Someone told me that I'm
amongst royalty, is that true?

How does that always get brought up?

I might have snuck that in a little bit.

Oh, yeah.

Yes, but her being Former Mrs. California,

what does that make me?

Mr. California. - Mr. California.

The king himself. - Yeah, exactly.

So tell me a little bit about the restaurant?

We were living in Orange County at the time,

got married here in Paso in 2004.

So we knew we loved it here and wanted to be here.

And we knew that we could utilize my background

in the restaurant business as well as just

his serial entrepreneurship to be able to get here.

But we didn't know when that was gonna be

we honestly thought it was
probably gonna be when we retire.

But wouldn't it be cool if we come here

when our kids are kids, we could raise them here.

They could be raised in the restaurant,

Tell me a little bit about what is the style of food

if you had to sum it up?

You know, farm-to-table has been used,

it's almost cliche now.

So I really call it dirty mouth.

For many years, we had our own farm,

we grew our own vegetables,

we serve them here at the restaurant.

Really?

Yes, we're Uber local.

These other buzzwords that you hear

like sustainability or sustainable,

we believe in those things as well.

And we have from day one.

But even this bar that we're leading against,

this is a tree that fell in Templeton,

and we hired a local woodworker.

And that woodworker created this bar

and all the tables that we have as well.

You literally are close to
the source with everything?

Yeah. - yes.

Yeah, so cool.

You know, we use a cork
flooring because it's sustainable.

You know, we we hired the local metalsmith to create

some of the lighting here,
the sconces that are behind us,

are made by a local metalsmith.

It's not just our local foods, produce meats,

but also local wine.

So if you look at our wine list,

I would say 99% of our wine list is local Paso wines

with local Central Coast wines.

And it seems you get a big local following

in the community as well.

Yeah, we feel really fortunate to have that.

Nothing better than coming in here on a weeknight

and seeing the same couple
people that have been here

five times that week, we love That - That's awesome.

Well, if you don't mind we have to go talk to Ryan,

I think we gotta taste some of his food.

Enjoy it, it's good.

Tell me a little bit about what we're cooking today?

So we're gonna be doing our octopus salad.

So this is just one eighth of octopus.

It's just one tentacle, a Spanish day boat octopus,

we just braise it, and just straight white wine

for about an hour and a half.

Yeah, that's it, bring it to a boil drop it,

drop it, let it go.

So we're gonna be grilling this up.

And we'll just leave that shade on the grill.

That'll take about two, maybe three minutes

on each side before it's fully done.

You don't wanna burn,

but you want a nice charred, you want marks.

You just wanna kiss it.

Yeah, you just want a hot all the way through.

So while that's going, we can totally build the salad.

So we start with our chickpeas.

These actually come from Los osos

from a farm called Kandarian farms.

These are peppadews, this is a South African pepper.

I believe they're lightly pickled,

but they add a really nice fresh flavor

than not spicy at all.

And then so these are peeled tomatoes,

we just take the skin off this skin

can be a little bit bitter.

Drop in boiling water for about maybe 15 seconds

just till the skin pops off, and we just peel it.

Then we're gonna grab any green we'll do.

Right now we're using kale in ours.

This is again as local kale also.

So really what besides the octopus,

everything else is pretty much local.

Salt, and then for our dressings,

we use Calabrian chili oil, it's really spicy,

so you only need like maybe an eighth of a teaspoon.

It's hot.

And then so this is gremolata,

just garlic, lemon, parsley, and local olive oil.

It's just kind of adds a little bit of a pop

and a little bit of freshness going into it.

And this is our macerated lemon of lemon.

We just take lemon segments get rid

of the pith, zest and everything.

Cook it in a little olive oil on the stove probably

about I don't know, maybe
30 seconds just to it falls apart.

You guys are fancy over here.

We do, we are we keep it really fancy.

I wanna flip that octopus really quick.

So just looking for about that much color.

You just don't wanna burn it.

If it's burnt, it gets really hard and tough.

It's not good.

When you see it starts like
flex and move it's about there.

So I'm just gonna slice it up a little bit.

This is mainly just for presentation.

There are a couple pieces into the salad.

So once it's fully mixed,

I'm just gonna go straight into the bowl.

Put that right there on top.

Now grab some of our house-made garlic aioli,

which is made just with confit garlic garlic,

and how you normally make an aioli.

And then we top it with just
a little bit of fresh oregano.

And that's it.

All right, so let's try this out.

When we first put this on the menu

I was in here eating it twice every day.

That's one of my favorite dishes.

We paired this with the white Rhone blend

for a few reasons.

Number one, there's enough
acidity in the white Rhone blend

to match the acidity of the dish.

Remember acid likes acid
and between the lemon juice

and the tomatoes and the dish

and the acidity in the wine,

they can keep up with each other.

The second reason is that the spicy in the dressing

goes great with the over-the-top fruity, aromatic,

and floral characteristic
of the white Rhone blend.

All right, so what's the second dish?

We're gonna be doing our lamb bolognese

with house-made pappardelle pasta.

Bolognese is a dish that I really enjoy

because it takes a long time,

you can tell someone doesn't
know how to make bolognese

when the meats tough.

It has a really runny sauce,

it should be, it's like meat paste almost.

Yeah, you wanna let it get nice and thick.

Yeah, you want it like basically mud

is what you're looking for.

We're looking for mud.

Sounds awesome.

First thing we're looking for is you wanna drop

your oyster mushrooms in there.

I just look for a little bit of color

so once I start seeing that a little bit of color

I'll just let them go, and I throw my Bolognese in.

Now give me the quick fix on how to make Bolognese

So what we do is we take all of our salami scraps

render that down.

And then we always throw in our meat,

beef is the body, pork is the flavor,

lamb is the bigger flavor.

You've got the trio?

We got the trio.

Usually, yeah. And then we put that in there,

you know you fry up a little tomato paste,

throw in your stock, white wine, marinara,

Kinda like just let it go.

So once I get this far, and I see a nice color.

So a little bit of white wine, and a lot a bit of butter.

When you have sauce left
on the plate after you eat it,

that's a very bad thing.

That means it wasn't done right.

So I usually let my pasta go about 3/4 of the way

in the water.

And I'll finish it the last 25% in the sauce.

You're getting that starch into the sauce,

and it soaks into the noodle,

and it's not two separate entities, it's one.

The other secret is you wanna make sure

that your water is salty like the ocean.

You can add a pinch but?

No. Yeah, I put cups.

So this I just go low and slow.

It's already cooked you're just rewarming.

So this is about 3/4 of the way done.

I'll splash a little bit of my pasta water in there

'cause you do want that in there.

So these are pappardelle,
we do an egg yolk based pasta.

There's nothing wrong with a lot of fat.

Finish this off in the sauce about the last 25%,

I'll just throw in a little bit of pecorino cheese.

So we'll grab our plate right here.

And then I'll finish with a little more pecorino

This is just some whipped ricotta

and for the last one this is salsa verde.

Which is basically a mixture,

there's mint, chile flakes caper, anchovy parsley.

Is that it?

That's it.

Let's try it.

The tannin and alcohol and the GSM goes great

with the fatty richness of the dish,

and the big bold dish likes a big bold wine.

These guys got the right idea.

These elephant seals come to
the San Luis Obispo shoreline

twice a year to rest and breed

after the 8 to 10 months a year that they spend at sea.

I hope you enjoyed this episode in San Luis Obispo

and Paso Robles, and we'll see you next time

on V is for Vino.