Opolo’s estate vineyards were established in 1995, with sites on both the west and east side of Paso Robles. The topographically diverse, coastal landscape of the westside vineyards provides for an intense and unique flavor profile. The heat and dryness of the east side vineyard make it an ideal microclimate for growing Bordeaux varietals. Home to a wide range of varietals, the estate vineyards help allow the team at Opolo to create many unique single varietals as well as award winning blends.
Most important in making high quality wine is starting with high quality grapes. Opolo’s vineyard team carefully monitors each lot of grapes throughout the season in order to produce the highest quality fruit possible. From taking leaf, petiole, and soil samples, to monitoring water uptake in the vines, all aspects of viticulture is carefully notated and examined with the intent of producing only high quality fruit for our winery. The entire Opolo production team works together every year to provide the best quality product possible.
At Opolo we believe a strong, cooperative relationship with the land and our environment is crucial. We practice sustainable methods in both the winery and vineyard operations in order to preserve our environment, water and local wildlife. Opolo is a “SIP” Certified operation as well as certified organic by “CCOF” in our 64 acre walnut orchard. We continue to be great stewards of the land and invite you to come to our vineyards and see our operations!
Opolo Vineyards has a long established reputation of growing and producing award winning wines in Paso Robles, California. With nearly 300 acres of vines on the east and west side of Paso Robles, Opolo Vineyards is privy to a wide range in climate, soil and growing potential—allowing extensive range of varietals to flourish. This variety combined with the passion behind the brand has made Opolo a favorite of wine enthusiasts everywhere.
Check out this video of their vineyards and property.
(Click on each wine to learn more about the wine and pricing)
A proud native of Chicago, IL. Jeff Faber grew up on the North Side of the city and moved to California in 1993. He spent many years in Broadcasting working behind the microphone for CBS and ABC radio before launching his own start-up company. Like so many people whose breath is taken away when they visit the California Central Coast, Jeff fell in love with the area and quickly learned that almost everyone you know either owns or a winery or an olive oil ranch.
"The most beautiful part about this area is how willing everyone is to share their knowledge of their craft. You work a few harvests, turn off your cell phones and lose yourself in the magic. You literally feel yourself decompress. What compelled Jeff to give up his company and start working for Opolo was that he wanted to learn the business from the ground up. “I literally knew very little about wine and wanted to stomp grapes, pour yeast into the tanks, experiment with blends, see the effect dry farming has on the flavor of grapes, etc"…At Opolo, they encourage you to do everything which is the very best way to learn a skill set.
For the past 12 years, Jeff has been the National Sales Manager for Opolo meeting people in city after city acting as a full-time “palate hunter” and helping folks have fun and learn a little more about themselves and of course, wine!
Here is a fun video of Jeff at the 2012 Opolo Crush.
Aug 23, 2020 at 3:00 PM
Permalink
We find ourselves in another month of business to-go here at Steve's Wine Bar. As we have done over the last three months, we have been sending our monthly wine tastings with our club members to enjoy at home and then pick their favorite wine from their tasting. This month we decided to create a menu that pairs with each of these wines you will be enjoying. You may want to craft your meal at home with our recipe's for a four course meal, or pick up a meal from our partner this month, Chestnut Tree on the Square. Our friend Suzanne Johnson will be putting together the meals for you take home and simply pop in the oven to finish the process in your kitchen. You will then be able to taste your wines with each course to make your decision on your favorite wines.
The process is simple; you will see we have once again 4 wines on each club level. Each course will pair with the corresponding menu item.
You may request the recipes for these items by email at info@steveswinebar.com. Call the Chestnut Tree, or order online, ahead of time, and they will prepare the meal to pick up in advance of you stopping by Steve's to pick up your tasting.
Riesling outside of France and Germany (and recently Australia) has earned a pervasive, but unfair, reputation as overly ripe and sweet. This could not be further from the truth, as many winegrowing regions from Washington to Oregon to New York are producing balanced, complex versions of this oft-misunderstood grape. An excellent example of this is Januik’s 2017 Bacchus Vineyard Riesling. It pours a light to medium gold color with white hues. The nose is complex, offering honeycrisp apple, peach, and bready notes with the slightest hint of petrol. The palate is layered with notes of ginger, honey, apple, apricot, and sleek minerality. This is easily enjoyable now, but has the acidity and structure to lay down for a year or two.
From the eternally versatile appellations of Languedoc, this vin gris displays some of the hallmark characteristics of ‘blush’-style wines from the regions and the grapes that compose them. A blend of Grenache, Cinsault, Carignan,This wine pours a pale pink/pale copper with shimmering white hues. The nose offers a whimsical blend of red berries, minerality, and the slightest hint of cotton candy. The palate offers a slightly-heavier-than light body enveloping fresh cherry, raspberry, and pomegranate cut by sleek minerality and zingy acidity.
Oregon has firmly established itself as the New World benchmark for cold climate Pinot Noir; a title that stretches across all price points. Among the newer entries into the winegrowing scene in the Willamette Valley is Portlandia, a multi-AVA-focused (Dundee Hills, Mcminnville, and Yamhill-Carlton) winery with an emphasis on Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris. Their 2018 is a lovely combination of Oregon’s quintessential fruit profiles and an approachability akin to the heavier-bodied pinots of Napa and Sonoma. It pours a rich ruby with subtle purple hues. The nose is a rich medley of red fruits including raspberry, black cherry, and rhubarb. The palate offers these fruits cut with subtle notes of five-spice and earthiness woven within a lush body with balanced acidity.
An underdog in the seemingly endless list of food-friendly Italian wines, Montepulciano is often overlooked for its Sangiovese-based counterparts. This is in spite of the fact that it is the second highest planted red grape in Italy. It most often finds its home in Abruzzo, a sizable region East of Rome that runs along the Adriatic coastline. This particular version goes through a rigorous vinification process before release; aging in oak and bottle. It pours a rich ruby with garnet hues and offers a nose of bittersweet chocolate, plum, dried cherry, and vanilla. The palate is rich with notes of plum, tart cherry, and slight hints of savory spice. The tannins are soft and well-integrated and the acidity prevents the overall rich profile from becoming too heavy.
Old World-purists rejoice! Burgundy has reached the wine club! This rendition comes from the premier cru of Vaillons, located near the actual town of Chablis. This uber-savory rendition of Chardonnay will challenge the way you think of the grape. It pours a light gold with green hues. The nose offers a crisp combination of pear, apple, and slight vegetal tinges (Think hay or lemongrass). The palate offers the quintessential slate-like minerality associated with Chablis that cuts through a juicy core of stone fruit and citrus; all accented by bright acidity.
After a brief hiatus, Provence is back on the wine list. Pandemic or not, this region still reigns supreme in rose production; attracting the attention and investment of movie stars and musicians alike. Mirabeau en Provence’s ‘ Classic’ version embraces the beautiful simplicity that has made this region famous. The 2019 vintage pours a brilliant pink color with white hues, offering notes of cherry, raspberry, and tart red currant on the nose cut by a subtle smokiness. The palate doubles down on the cherry and other red fruits with hints of minerality and blowing acidity.
It seems somewhat of a misnomer to call any part of California practically ‘cold-climate’, but the Pinots and Chardonnays from Southern Sonoma and Napa would beg to differ. Pinot from the Russian River Valley AVA and its sub-AVA’s in particular are among the most critically acclaimed in the world of cold-climate Pinot Noir. Sebastopol Hill’s (located towards the southern end of the region) 2017 vintage of their RRV-sourced Pinot Noir embraces the requisite characteristics wholeheartedly. The wine pours a beautiful ruby to pale ruby, and offers notes of bing cherry, fresh vanilla, and savory leather. The palate offers a core of red fruit accented by orange peel, cola, and savory herbaceousness. This is all brought into balance by subtle minerality, balanced acidity, and silky tannins.
Paso Robles has long been one of the more heralded regions for Zinfandel growth in CA (Makes sense as it is the region’s heritage grape!). Though the market focus of the region may currently be on rich, ripe Cabernets, the Zin’s have character and prestige all their own. Opolo’s 2018 ‘Mountain’ Zinfandel displays the balance of power and nuance that has come to characterize Zinfandels from the central coast. This wine pours an inviting ruby color with rich purple hues. The nose offers rich blue and dark red fruits accented by floral notes, black pepper, and subtle mesquite. The palate is HUGE, with the fruit retained from the nose accented and perfumed by the 15.5 ABV while still offering subtle woody and peppery notes. The tannins are silky-smooth and the acidity holds everything in balance.
Aug 7, 2020 at 11:00 AM
Permalink
Reddy Vineyards was founded in 1997 by acclaimed viticulturist Dr. Vijay Reddy. His vast expertise in both soil chemistry and farming led him to plant grapes along with other pioneering farmers in the Texas High Plains. His passion for the vineyard turned into a lifetime pursuit to perfect and cultivate fine wine grapes from this unique growing region. Dr. Reddy’s son Akhil launched the first Reddy Vineyards 100% authentic estate-grown and bottled wines in 2019.
The Texas High Plains American Vitcultural Appellation was established in 1993 in the West Texas High Plains. The region is the foundation of Texas winegrowing, including more than 8 million acres and encompassing 22 counties. The region’s major cities include Lubbock, Brownfield and Amarillo. 85% of the wines made in Texas come from the Texas High Plains AVA.
Reddy Vineyards winery is located in Brownfield, Texas, just outside of Lubbock in the Texas High Plains. State-of-the-art equipment is configured to produce high-quality fine wines. Reddy uses a super-efficient Pellenc harvester that picks and destems the clusters and sorts the fruit right in the vineyard, saving fuel and personnel hours while delivering very high-quality fruit and eliminating the need for a sorting table and separate de-stemmer. The winery is fitted with stainless steel tanks including small lot two-ton fermenters, and single bins for micro fermentations, hand punch downs and pumpovers provide winemaking options for the diversity in the vineyard. All tanks are temperature controlled for heating and chilling. The wines are pressed with a bladder press and is moved to barrel by pumps. The winery is also equipped with its own lab.
Reddy Vineyards has the pick of the best fruit from the vineyard giving its winemakers a fantastic selection to create blended and single-varietal wines. The Reddy Family decided to focus on what its vineyards and Texas can do best—warm-climate varietals expertly crafted and blended to showcase richness, forward fruit, body and succulent soft tannins in the red wines, and clean varietal character in the white wines.
As in our previous tastings, simply do an advance purchase on two or more of these featured wines and you will be invited to join us on the Zoom call with Eric Sigmund from Reddy Vineyard. Pick up at the bar prior to the tasting on the 16th.
Or simply stop in and pick up a few in person.
Eric Sigmund’s path to wine came somewhat unexpectedly and at the expense of a lucrative career he spent years training for. Three years out of law school, working in international law in Washington DC, he took a weekend job at Total Wine & More stocking shelves and hand-selling wine to help pay off his student loans. As a law career began to look less and less fulfilling, he made a dramatic shift and took a full-time job at Total as a sales associate at one of the chain’s largest stores. He eventually became a supervisor, then wine manager for the company’s flagship store in Maryland where he was handling foundational wine training for 30 sales associates, overseeing 70 staff members and managing 50 million in annual sales. He was promoted again to the corporate office where he built partner relationships and import agreements with wineries in Europe as the assistant French fine wine buyer.w
A friendly introduction from a law-school classmate who grew up with Akhil Reddy connected Eric with Reddy Vineyards as they planned to launch the estate-grown Reddy Vineyard wines and build a new state-of-the-art winery. With his extensive on-the-job wine experience, studies and mind for business and law, he was a good fit. In February 2019, he moved his family to Texas to work full-time with the Reddys.
Eric saw the potential of Reddy Vineyards before he moved to Texas, and since then he’s become even more bullish on the future of Texas wineries like Reddy who are steadfastly focused on raising the state’s quality and reputation as a fine wine producer dedicated to growing and producing 100% authentic Texas estate-grown wines. “One of the reasons I was really attracted to coming to Texas was that I believe Texas is on the verge of being a major national force in the wine industry,” he added. “I believe in 10-15 years Texas will be right up there with California, Oregon and Washington.”
As Chief Operating Officer, Eric’s responsibilities include “whatever it takes to run a winery— from soup to nuts,” he says. He helped build out the winery, was involved in winemaking, from blending and tasting trials to topping, racking and lab analysis of the first vintages of the Reddy Wines and he’s responsible for the winery’s legal, human resources, business planning, sales and distribution strategies.
Eric spends a lot of time tasting with both wine industry trade and consumers in the Dallas area to share the Reddy Vineyards wines along with his passionate belief in the future of Texas wines. He holds a Wine & Spirits Education Trust Advance Level certification, is a Certified Sommelier with the Court of Master Sommeliers and is a Certified Specialist of Wine through the American Society of Wine.
Aug 5, 2020 at 1:00 PM
Permalink