Good Grape Wine Company

July 24 2006

Raving Fans at the Tasting Room!

Having turned the page on my Paso trip with today’sreceipt of the two cases of wine that I purchased at various wineries, I’mstruck by the wine blog Grape Juice and part II in their two-part series onwinery tasting rooms.

A brief aside, however, regarding the wine I bought andthe stress in watching UPS tracking via their tracking number:

I was in Pacific Grove, near Monterey, when I shipped thewine—and it was early in the morning and cool—“wear a jacket” cool—andfoggy. The blast furnace-like heat ofPaso the day before was a distant memory and the heat wave we had the last twoweeks in the rest of the country wasn’t top of mind.

So, I shipped the wine UPS ground. It was expensive to do so, and to send itvia air would have been even more expensive. I don’t care how you cut it, adding 25-30% to the total cost of wine foradditional shipping is tough.

I hoped for the best and was actually more concerned aboutbottle breakage then heat damage through the shipping process. Then about Tuesday last week as thethermometer crept into the 90s, I started sweating (figuratively) about thestate of my wine. I had visions of itcooking on the back of a truck. Ipulled up the UPS itinerary via the tracking number and HORRORS! It was beingsent by rail and was backed up a day in St. Louis where power had been outbecause of the heat. Great! My precious wine collected from a dozenwineries was sitting in St. Louis and getting hammered by the heat.

I started doing Internet research to see what the negativeaffects would be. Even though it wasinsulated by some Styrofoam, it would be no match for 100-degree heat on theoutside and internal temperatures that can be close to double the externaltemperature.

I Googled “wine + heat” hoping to find some solace. The gist of what I found on the Internet isthat if the cork doesn’t pop out, then you’re in pretty decent immediate shape,but there’s no telling what the long term affects can be—the best solution isto drink all of the wine young because it will depreciate in quality with lostbouquet and washed out flavor in the coming weeks and month(s). With the foil caps, the corks on my winedidn’t pop out, but several seemed unnaturally elevated within the enclosure. I’m assuming it saw abusive heat.

So, my answer to this situation is to drink the wine. Two or three bottles a week for about sevenor eight weeks. Hopefully I can do somehead to head comparisons between a Sangiovese and a Nebbiolo, Zin vs. Zin,Pinot vs. Pinot, etc and make the best of the situation.

There are several wines I wish I could lay down—includinga marvelous Zinfandel from Zin Alley, but alas, in the name of conscientiouswine citizenry, I’ll heed the call of duty and pull the cork.

Idid have one bottle casualty—the Rabbit Ridge Old Vines Zinfandel didn’t makeit—I got some leakage out of the cork—I don’t know if this was a bad cork job,or the transit, but given circumstances, I’ll shoulder the responsibility forthis one.

But,Rabbit Ridge brings me back to my original topic—winery tasting roomexperiences. In the second article(found here), Erin details additional items that make for a holisticallyenjoyable experience including the oft overlooked, but very simple notion ofhaving a variety of different wines and a reasonable price per tasting.

Theone winery that delivered on this in spades in Paso Robles was RabbitRidge.

Originallybased in Healdsburg, Rabbit Ridge opened an enormous Tuscan style facility inPaso Robles accompanied with a distinct line of wines that is, by label andgrape sourcing, different then their Sonoma wines—smart business todifferentiate the two now, before a growth curve causes an entire re-brandingeffort to delineate the two. And, withthe Central Coast wine scene taking off, it’s doubly smart.

TheRabbit Ridge wine tasting area is itself unremarkable and in a large warehousestyle space that also houses pallets and pallets of wine and barrels. It’s an odd contrast, to be sure, becausethe Tuscan style exterior of the building is marvelous and the tasting room’slack of development is an odd juxtaposition.

But,what the wine tasting area lacks in charm, it makes up for in absolute winedecadence. They pour a lot ofwine—freely and happily.

Wegot mixed in with a distributor tasting, so we got the nice take-away stemwareand the free pours, but I think they charge $5 for 8 pours and refund thatmoney upon purchase.

TheirPaso tasting menu can be found here and includes 19 wines, plus a couple ofothers that they pull out to treat the tasting customers.

And,as I mentioned, the pours are healthy. So, consider for a moment that even at a healthy 5 minutes betweenpours, you can taste through 20 wines in an hour to an hour and ½. If each of those pours is 1.5 oz or so,that’s the equivalent of 30 oz of wine or about five glasses of wine. If you’re not dumping, you might later wishyou were …

Mybuddy regaled the woman doing the pouring with some source credible storiesabout his very legit and true admiration for the wines based on his daysliving in Healdsburg along with his predilection for buying by the case—4 casesthis time—and the wine kept a flowing.

Thiswas before lunch, mind you. I startedscarfing down saltines just to throw something in my stomach to stanch what tothat point had been a mainline between the wine and my bloodstream.

Ifyou’re looking for good times, Rabbit Ridge is your place.

Theeasiest way to separate somebody from their wallet is to give them acourtesy-filled experience and a lot of pours of tasty wines. In this regard, Rabbit Ridge delivers allthe way around—satisfying the two qualifying criteria that Erin pointedout—variety and value.

Salut!

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