Winter is a fabulous time to avoid the crowds, traffic and overloaded restaurants of Paso Robles; Now is the time to plan your winter wine tasting!
Yes, rarely we do get rain…but when it arrives, oh how I love sipping wine around the fireplace in a smartly selected winery. The area has an eerie beauty with the vines dormant, and the rolling hills revealed for all they are.
Our weather can be rather enjoyable during winter. It is the end of January and the weather forecast is for several days of 70+ degree days! The air is clear, clean and fresh and a wonderful escape from the daily grind. And why not try an indoor olive oil tasting with Pasolivo.
Another advantage to touring in the Winter are off-peak hotel prices. I’ve noticed that many hotels are advertising special rates on Groupon and Social Living. If you’re a value buyer like me, be sure to check out these sites as what you do to plan your winter wine tasting. I know that our (almost) 5 star hotel the Allegretto is having special deals through winter and into spring.
While the temperatures vary, whether it is chilly or warm, with over 200 Paso Robles wineries you are sure to find the perfect hotel, great spots for great food, and smaller groups on your tours. It’s a winning combination.
Consider calling Laura at Central Coast Food and Wine Tours to plan your winter wine tasting! Laura would enjoy helping to book your tour, plan your place to stay and recommend dining options.
A great way to personalize your wine touring in Paso Robles or San Luis Obispo is to try Central Coast Food Tours hourly tours. What are hourly tours?
They are private tours where you pay only for our footwork in scheduling your desired wine stops and the transportation to pick you up, tour, and drop you off. For this service we charge $50/hr, plus our regular gratuity of 20%. This rate serves up to seven people. For groups over 7 we have a daily surcharge of $125 – still a great deal! Does this intrigue you to try Central Coast Food Tours hourly tours? One of our favorite places to take people is the ultra-premium winery EPOCH. Read more about EPOCH at www.EPOCHestatewines.com
These hourly tours have a minimum of 4 hours, and we start and finish the day according to your plans for the day. As I mentioned above, I am happy to recommend wineries based on your group’s preferences, make the necessary reservations for tastings, put in your order for sandwiches and pick them up! The only thing we don’t cover on Central Coast Food Tours hourly tours are the tasting fees and tips to your servers at the wineries.
This new option on our menu of services gives you a convenient way to pull together a group for tasting and have the knowledge of a local to help you plan your day! Please give Laura a call if you would like to explore this option further. We would be happy to share our information and ideas to make your day special. Visit us at www.Centralcoastfoodtours.com or call Laura at 805.400.9054.
With the holidays here, people are busy shopping for all manner of gifts for their loved ones. But I want to ask, “Who needs a gift certificate?”
From my personal experience there are certain people who really would prefer a gift certificate to a prepackaged gift. Who are these people you might ask. Here’s my take on folks that really might prefer a gift certificate to an experience:
The person who has everything, and what s/he doesn’t have has the money to purchase it.
The crowd in that 25 -35 age range seems to really prefer experiences over material objects. One of our tours would make a perfect gift!
Wine lovers, those wanting to learn more about wine, and foodies in general will be thrilled with a gift of a wine or food tour.
Celebrating a special event such as an anniversary, a job retirement, or a renewal of vows all present unique special occasions for gifting a special experience.
Someone already planning a trip to San Luis Obispo County? Make it a special experience by gifting a food tour to learn about the area’s restaurants and things to do.
Someone got wedding bells on the mind and looking for the perfect venue to propose? Our private wine tour is the perfect way to set the stage for the words, “I DO”.
Families are always looking for ways to get the tribe together on a mutually enjoyable experience – you’ve found it here! Get your certificates and use them when the kids come to visit; it’s a family affair!
Finally, you’ve waited to the last minute to shop and you need something now! Our gift certificates are downloaded immediately upon purchase.
Wow, what a year! Rain, no rain, hot temps for only a week or so prior to harvest, and coolness again. What the heck is going on? I’m hearing that this season will produce wonderful grapes. I’m hearing the long hang-time on the vines at the end of the season will produce extraordinary fruit characteristics, and it seems we are not chasing the heat and potential alcohol content to tone it down. Listen to me: I just listen, observe and have yet to taste these wines. Though, don’t get me wrong: harvest is over and we are happy! and I’m looking forward to learning more about the wines and tasting them.
It was a sad event that our beloved Sonoma neighbor had such devastation with the fires. There are reasons why North of us and South of us, we are at risk of horrible fires. Anyone remember the Chimney Rock Fire? That was here in Paso Robles about 3 years ago.
With a very late harvest at our belt, we are busy getting into the final throws of a full harvest. With a Sub-Appellation of 11 different areas, you can imagine each area is different. At this late date we’ve had a freeze or two and several inches of rain – so anything still hanging on the vines will go back to the earth for fertilization.
Alas, our food and wine tours do not stop. We love the whole process of the circle of harvest.
Harvest is over and we are happy! Be sure to check in with us for one or the other of our tours! And know that with Central Coast Food and Wine Tours you’ll always have the insider access and attention to detail you’ve come to expect!
When selecting your activity, be sure to check out Central Coast Food & Wine Tour Reviews.
We are a small company, and able to make customer service our number one priority. We do a smaller number of tours, and really like to focus on making each and every tour special for our guests.
Here are some of our reviews from Trip Advisor and Yelp:
Yelp:
“Yule Gurreau was our food tour guide today in San Luis. He was beyond knowledgeable about the area, the history and the food! So friendly and engaging. His stories were so interesting we almost forgot we were on a food tour! All of the restaurants and the artisan chocolate store were beyond delicious!! Thank you Yule for a most enjoyable day.” Sandra
“My friend and I had an opportunity to spend the afternoon with Laura touring downtown Paso Robles this past fall. Laura introduced us to several great businesses and provided us a personalized tour. She was knowledgeable and made our experience very enjoyable. I would definitely recommend signing up for one of her tours.” Eric
“Can’t say enough good things about Laura and our tour with her! Usually my wife and I do a group wine tour while we’re visiting the area and this time we decided to switch it up and are so glad we did. Laura tailored the experience to our tastes but also suggested a few unique experiences that we really enjoyed including an olive oil and spirits tasting. Laura was absolutely wonderful; you can tell that she is passionate about sharing Paso’s food and wine culture and takes pride in the quality of her guest’s experience. We plan on doing more tours with Laura in the future!” Taylor
Trip Advisor:
LOVED EVERY SECOND OF OUR TOUR
“We had the privilege of touring with Laura over the weekend. My husband and i were the only people in the tour and we got the VIP treatment. She had so much knowledge about the food, wine and the city. Totally worth everything second. We would do this tour again.”
Jessica
BEST TOUR GUIDE WE EVER HAD
Laura was terrific! We booked the 6 person food and wine tasting tour and enjoyed it so much that we booked a second tour with her a couple days later! She tailored the tours based on what our tastes were, and every winery we visited was fantastic. Laura is also full of knowledge about the local history and the culture. Not only were our tours full of great tastings but they were very educational. We will return to the Paso Robles area again soon with friends specifically to tour with Laura. Would highly recommend!
Adele
CENTRAL COAST FOOD TOURS Paso Robles
Took a fantastic walking food and wine tour today in Paso Robles! Beautiful weather as we met Mary our guide to find out we were the only couple on the tour! Talk about a private tour! She was fantastic, friendly and had us laughing and fascinated in all the history and stories she had about the town. I had erroneously assumed this would be small bites, but no, each stop just keep getting better with beautiful surrounding, great dishes and fantastic wine pairings! The prime rib sandwich at the Paso Robles Inn was so tender and went perfectly with the Cabernet from Castoria Winery! And who knew you could pair wine with spices, but oh so good. I will remember this tour for many years to come! If ever you are nearby, treat yourself and walk along with Central Coast tours for a delightful, culinary treat!
On our property one never knows what the olive growth will bring, with changing weather, windy storms and the 2 year on/off production of the olive trees.
But this year the olive growth looks to be phenomenal for the 2019 harvest! Yule and I are so excited by all the blooms we see in our small orchard that we are considering gathering the product and bottling our own estate olive oil.What a dream of ours to bottle our own lovingly grown, pruned and picked olives! We have several varietals, primarily Tuscan.
After all the rain (I’m not complaining) we love the warm weather in Paso Robles! My plants actually asked for water, and I loved sun bathing on the deck in the speckled sunlight. Are we entering into Summer? Our vineyards are turning from verdant green to variant shades of yellow.
The grape vines look healthier than I’ve ever seen them. Robust, green shoots, reaching towards the sky. Everyone’s one edge, though, wondering if some rogue storm will steal all the blooms off the vines. Farming is a tough occupation – meant only for the strongest amongst us.
We love the warm weather but let’s see what the weather brings over the next week or so. As well as the grape growers, the olive growers are also watching their crops closely. Everything is in bud, and it all could be lost with a huge windy storm. Yule and I grow a small orchard of 19 olive trees. We have the largest bloom I’ve ever seen. Cross your fingers, and we’ll have a healthy wine and olive harvest this season!
Farm Tours with Central Coast Food Tours is always a good time.
We offer these as a private, personal tour created just for your group. My favorite farm we’ve spent time at recently is Stepladder Farm. Stepladder Farm is located in the beautiful hills of Cambria and is a multi-generational farm. While the farm raises goats and makes goat cheese, they also work with CalPoly to procure milk for their cow’s milk Cheeses.
Visiting the Farm
Farm Tours at Stepladder farm are best scheduled once the baby goats (the “kids”) are born.
This usually happens around April. This event kicks off the mom’s milk production which lasts usually through September or October. Taking one of our tours to the farm just after the kids are born affords you an opportunity to frolic with the babies. The kids are really too cute, and most curious. Any time spent with these adorable creatures is a treat for children as well as adults.
As Stepladder Farm gears up for their goat cheese production, you’ll get a chance to see how the milking operation works. This is not a large farm. They keep less than 100 female goats for milking. Still, seeing what operating a goat farm and creamery involves is quite an eye opener. On the tour you’ll see how the goats are milked, learn about all the sanitary precautions taken to safeguard the health safety of the cheese, and best of all… taste the cheese! You’ll be given the opportunity to also taste their cow’s milk cheese, and purchase any of the cheese you taste.
Our Farm Tours include everything from artisanal olive oil farms, to vegetable and fruit farms to ranches. Call us to arrange a full day of adventure for you!
Anyone working in customer service knows the value of customer feed-back. At Central Coast Food Tours we actively ask for your feed-back and consider it most thoughtfully to improve our tours. Especially with a new tour, it helps us to know if our efforts are on track or if our tour is a loser. Our newest tour is the “Double the Fun” tour which includes both food and winery visits. Since we started the tour in May, we have been listening to guest feed-back to fine tune this new tour – based on this guest’s review, I’d say were almost there!
NEWWe did the Food & Wine Tours in Paso Robles and had an absolute blast. Yul is very knowledgeable, entertaining and we learned a lot about local history, wines and oil . The food was first class and he took us to some beautiful wineries. Loved the small group of only 6 people and we all became friends at the end of the day. No stress and very relaxing — kinda like the Garden of Eden where the grapes grow into your mouth. Can’t think of a better way to spend a day in Paso Robles.
With the availability of wonderful Paso Robles wines, local meats, and all our farmers’ Market product, Labor Day is a big day around here. For us it centers on a BBQ and being around our family and friends for one last celebration of Summer.
Every Labor Day it’s ribs on the BBQ, and over the years we’ve tried many recipes. This year we’ll be making some luscious and tasty ribs by the “coca-cola method”, generously shared by a friend we met on one of our food tours (see, I really do save your recipes you generously send to me). Since we are having Russian family from out of town, we’ll also have an assortment of Russian salads, and not to forget caviar (the standard for this group when celebrating).
We hope you and your family take this opportunity to visit, share