Passing through Paso Robles

[marypcbuk]

We weren't really planning on wine tasting, but after coffee we fancied lunch at Farmstand 46, the deli/sandwich bar in the same building as Four Vines and you can never have too many Four Vines-etched Riedel O tasting glasses, so we dropped in for a taste and ended up chatting about wine (you can taste the soil in tempranillo - it's like a mouthful of clean dirt) and music and tech and whatever with the nice Australian who upsold us to the Phoenix, which you have to buy in threes (because of the bottle design - two wings and a head between the trilogy). He suggested trying Adelaida Cellars, so after we'd petted the cat and checked that yes, Norman was still selling Monster Zin 03 at $96 the case and yes, we could fit one in the car, we turned right instead of left and tasted there; interesting mix of wines, including a Zin I can only describe as 'juicy' (their notes said 'supple' but I say juicy) and another cat to pet while we were chatting to the tasting room manager... So we decided to stop in Cambria instead of pushing north. Black Cat Bistro was closed and the restaurant we were heading for after seeing a picture of the blackberry pie interprets 'open till 9' as 'close the kitchen at 8.05' so we went back to Robyns, which is an odd mix of slightly asian comfort food made a bit more healthily than usual; mushroom and spinach lasagna and firestone double barrelled ale, which would very much like to be a bitter. And hey, the new Leverage on TV!