The first weekend in May I went on a farm and wine tour given by Debbi Dubbs of Deb’s Kitchen. We went to the Cambria/Paso Robles wine region. We had perfect weather and it was really beautiful. Deb and her crew are great to hang out with. There was about 12 of us in total I think.
I arrived in Cambria Friday night. We stayed at the Cambria Pines Lodge. We all met at the home of one of Deb’s good friends. We had some lovely wine while Deb gave us a cooking demo and then we ate dinner together.
The next morning we were greeted with our tour bus for the day.
First stop was an olive oil company – Pasolivo Olive Oil, where we had an olive oil tasting. My recent post contained props that I purchased while I was there. Their olive oil was very nice and they had some really tasty fancy salts as well. You can see my props in the picture below.
Next stop was Rangeland Winery. Rangeland is also a sustainable farm.
What’s so unusual about this winery is that they hold the wine tastings in the beautiful home of the owners, which is also on the same estate as the vineyards. Wine tastings are by appointment only, of course.
This is Laird Foshay. He and his wife, Lisa do the wine tastings out of their beautiful house.
Next stop – Halter Ranch. A beautiful winery. They have 100% estate-grown wines and they are farmed sustainably as well. Though this winery has been here a while, it’s gone through a major renovation with state of the art winemaking equipment, and they made the new winery facility as green as possible. We didn’t get a tour of this facility – that happens in the fall with the harvest (future post).
This is a very large estate. As we walked through the vineyards, we came across a beautiful wood covered bridge that takes you to the wine tasting area.
It was quite warm on the day we were there so the white wine was being chilled in the coolest wine chiller I’d ever seen (upper right photo). I had the 2013 Cotes De Paseo Blanc, which is a yummy white blend that was a bit floral. Very nice indeed.
Last stop was the Windrose Farm, a small family farm in San Luis Obispo County run by Bill and Barbara Spencer. They are an organic farm and are turning it into a biodynamic farm. They can be found at the Santa Monica Farmers Market on Wednesdays, and on Sundays, they are at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. I took so many shots there, the farm will be it’s own post.
About the photos: All of these images were taken with my Canon 5d Markii. I used the canon 24mm-105mm zoom lens. Those of you that know me, know that I am not a fan of zoom lenses for any of my studio work, however when going out in the field, it’s extremely handy. This lens is not as sharp (focus quality) as a fixed lens. Fixed lenses are not zoom lenses – they have only one focal length so there’s no moving elements and that tends to make images much sharper in focus.
I am using Adobe LightRoom to process my RAW files and edit all my images. I will be doing a future post about that and show you the horrible “before” shots along side the “after” shots. You’ll be shocked at how you can take a shot that you would think is a throw-away, to a portfolio piece.
Chef Deb is a good friend of mine – this is not a sponsored post and I had a fabulous time!
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