Castoro offers a great sampling of regional varieties for Central Coast wine tasting.

We arrived at Castoro Cellars on a beautiful spring morning as our first stop on a Paso Robles wine tasting tour (although Castoro is technically in Templeton – close enough!) The rows of groomed vines leading up to the tasting room are accented by a whimsy, (which is a welcome characteristic of the operation generally) — there resides a sculpture, titled “Daisy’s Dream,” a full-size cow triumphantly making a mid-air frisbee catch. 🙂 (The frisbee is somewhat thematic — Castoro has a disc golf course, great for a group outing!)

We were greeted at the tasting room counter by Jan, sporting a beautiful smile and a gentle, homey-feeling, welcome. as she guided us on picking out 7 wines each to sample off of their rather extensive list (free with Priority Wine Pass, our central coast wine passport of choice! – don’t forget to use the code WINERY at checkout for an additional $20 off)

As we went through the list, we thoroughly enjoyed chatting with Jan about the winery, the winemaking philosophy, the (spoiled!) vineyard cat, and of course, life in general. The winemakers’ emphasis is bringing out the character of the wide spectrum of varietals in the Paso Robles AVA (and its many sub-AVA’s, which of course are all part of the San Luis Obispo County wine tasting region, which is itself part of the massive Central Coast AVA – whew, if you want to get your wine geek on, there’s more detail at wineinstitute.org). We found the wines to be very representative of the individual qualities of the varietals as expressed through the weather and terroir of the region – there’s a nice lightness and brightness to them which we thoroughly enjoyed.

Castoro Cellars has their share of accolades and awards (including a recent San Francisco Chronicle Gold Medal for their Zinfusion), and, the tasting room hostess also passed on a great piece of insider knowledge — Trader Joe’s sources their very attractively priced central coast private label wines from Castoro. (Yes, we fact-checked it, sub-$10 Trader Joe’s labeled central coast wines and on the back, from Castoro Cellars!)

It’s wonderful, for us, having as inclusive a wine passport as Priority Wine Pass, with over 250 California wineries to choose from, it’s a great way to get out and explore!