Wine n dine! Wish Of Winery

The West Side Story
The Paso Robles appellation is now emerging from the shadows of Napa and Sonoma as Paso Robles' quality is no longer a well-kept secret. Wine enthusiasts are now learning and talking about the quality of Paso Robles appellation wines and buying them in record amounts.

To the west of Paso Robles, located high in the chalky Santa Lucia coastal hills and directly inland from Hearst Castle is the West Side, or Adelaida region, named for an old 1800s farming community. The West Side enjoys unique soils and climate, and has a larger diurnal swing than any other appellation in California. The result is an unusually wide range of microclimates in vineyard sites.

The calcareous, chalky, rock soils of the West Side are unusual to California. High pH chalk soils are highly prized in Europe for premium vineyards because of the reduced vigor of vines grown on chalk. As in Europe, the result on the West Side is low grape yield, with most vineyards harvesting two tons of grapes or less per acre. Rainfall on the West Side is heavy during the winter, with yearly totals ranging between 25 to 50 inches. Historically, and despite the difficulty of the steep, rocky terrain, the early farms in the Paso Robles area were located on the West Side to take advantage of the rainfall. Many of the West Side vineyards also take advantage of the good rains by "dry farming," using no irrigation.

It is this unique combination of unusual chalky soils, abundant rainfall, and rough and rocky high elevation vineyard sites that challenges the vines into producing small berry clusters of marvelously concentrated grapes. Coupled with the wide spectrum of micro-climates, the flavors and character from vineyard site to vineyard site vary remarkably, and provide the winemaker with a broad palate of wine components from which to blend deep complexity. It takes many years to really prove a new vineyard, but there is now enough history to make an accurate prediction about quality. West Side wines are superb, and improving at a rapid rate as the viticultural practices are tailored to the locale, and as the processing styles of the winemakers bring out the full expression of the grape.

Francois and Jean-Pierre Perrin, owners of world-renowned Chateau du Beaucastel from the Chateauneuf-du-Pape area near Orange, France gave a significant vote of confidence to the West Side a few years ago. Together with Robert Haas, internationally known importer and marketer of fine wines, they purchased land in the Adelaida area on the West Side. Their acquisition came after years of an extensive soil and climate evaluation search, which took them throughout the grape growing regions of the world. With full confidence that they would produce superior wines from West Side grapes, they invested heavily in a specialized nursery for their imported pedigreed varieties of French root stock and selected quality clones of fruiting wood. Ignacio Paderewski, a famous turn-of-the-century concert pianist, founding member of the League of Nations, and later the Premier of Poland was an early West Side enthusiast. He came to the Paso Robles area for the curative thermal baths and was so pleased by the beauty of the area that he ended up purchasing a large West Side ranch on which he planted a highly praised vineyard.

In the 1960s, Dr. Stanley Hoffman bought property next to the former Paderewski ranch, and hired the late Andre Tchelistcheff to advise him on the vineyard potential of his acreage. Tchelistcheff, often called the dean of California wines, was astounded by the chalky soils, and enthusiastically recommended the planting of a vineyard. The former Hoffman vineyards continue to produce excellent wine grapes, which are highly sought after by ultra-premium wineries.

Meanwhile, the East Side of the Paso Robles area has many of the same climatic advantages as the West Side, but also benefits from an abundance of ground water for higher production, and level to gently rolling land which is easier to cultivate than the rough rocky hills of the West Side. Major investors, such as Wine World (a Nestle company which owns several important wineries including Meridian and Beringer) and J. Lohr, have planted and built wineries for large scale premium wine production on the East Side. Other visionaries and wine enthusiast also began populating the area so that what had been only three wineries with limited production in the 1950's has grown to over 120 wineries today.