After a full year of many fun wine festivals and events, I found myself very excited about the inagural Paso Garagiste, on Nov 12th.I didn't know completely what to expect. As so few of these producers have tasting rooms, I knew there would be very few that I had any familariy. You will not find these wines at your grocery store, that's for sure!

We were told the event would take place at Windfall Farms in a horse stable. Now you may have a visual of Christmas lawn decorations, baby Jesus, and farm animals, or whatever your ...

As the Summer closes and we make our way through harvest, here comes fall, and a new style of wine festival. The Paso Garagiste has a whole new spin on what we think of when it comes to wine festivals. 

On November 12, the grand tasting 2-5 PM, hosted at Windfall Farms in Paso Robles (Creston), will be an event celebrating, what I call the "mom and pop" winemakers, AKA the "garagistes." As their site explains, the garagiste is a term derived from France as a way to denigrate small lot winemakers, (often producing in the garage) who refuse to ...

It's that time of year when the grapes are being harvested and wine is being produced. It's also a time of celebration of the harvest, to enjoy the outdoors with good food and wine, while we still have great weather.

On October 8th, the Santa Barbara Vintners Association put on the annual Celebration of Harvest, held at Rancho Sisquoc winery, in Santa Maria Valley. There was no shortage of media covering this wine event, and I saw many familar friendly faces. Chris Czar was out with his crew taking footage for a television show, while local photographer Bob ...

Wine and Fire was a fantastic celebration of 10 years of the Sta Rita Hills AVA and recognized a legend in the industry, Richard Sanford. It was 3 days of open houses, panel discussions, wine dinners, and several other special events with the grand tasting held at the La Purisima Mission in Lompoc, California. There was llive music, lots of BBQ including the Hitching Post banging out some amazing grilled sliders topped with grilled onions & mushrooms and seared ahi tacos with fresh salsa and slaw. Rooney's Irish Pub in Orcutt took their sweet time smoking whole pigs all ...

It seems we are in full swing of what I call wine festival season! It is summer time and it's a great time to get out of the house even for just the day, but even better when you can turn it into a weekend away. 

There are so many to choose from it can be difficult to decide which one's to go to. In just the past few months I've been to three wine festivals and have at least four more that I'm planning to hit in the coming weeks/months. There are a lot ...