Why does it feel like when we do love life posts they are mostly about food?  Cause food is DELICIOUS!  What’s cool about it is that everyone in the world tries to do it the best they can, as often as they dare.  Sooo many cultures center their everyday plans by it, and they’re special occasions.  Food is also eaten hopefully every day, hopefully mulitple times, throughout your entire life.  What does this mean?  That if we’re doing it all the time, we should try and make it fun and rewarding.

This was exactly the case at the Falcon Nest Winery in Paso Robles, just over the mountain pass via route 46.  At the end of the meal, I was in one of those food coma’s that just leave you wanting to roll on your side and drool blissfully for the rest of the night.  As a recent joiner to Yelp, I had this to say about my experience…

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“I could sum up my incredible experience in just one remark if I wanted to, which would be “Ooh la la!”  That could be it, but no.  Brilliant food, long honest laughter and succulent, red wine went perfectly together, to create an experience that deserves a longer story.

We were lucky enough when we walked in at sunset to find both the owners there, Franco and Carol, who served us with warmth and kindness, and reminded me of old world candor and humor.  Carol taught me a ton about wine in just twenty short minutes as I’m fairly naive about the whole thing.  For me, if it tastes good and the energy from the people and the place rock, then we’re good.  Yes, their red wines were amazing, loved every one.

As we didn’t set up a reservation at all and just walked in to check them out, they were starting to get ready for a small private group of four, for whom Franco was magically conjuring up venison stew, squab and some other amazing scented treasures wafting in from the kitchen.  They offered to check on how much they had, and if enough, would love to include us in the special dinner.  Granted, dinner at The Falcon Nest is regularly offered by Franco, but this was a special rare blend of food that they had arranged to cook previously… so we felt very honored that we could be included.  Their pricing seemed more than fair, and later we were thankful we stayed.

Carol was already open and warm to us and once Franco had made everything and served it, he was happy to stick around and talk about cooking stories and world travels and cultures with us.  They made an adorable couple and we quietly made photographs of them while we all laughed and brought our conversation late into the night.  They closed at 7:30pm, but Carol and Franco stayed and joked with us until 10:30!  That’s THREE HOURS… not a tiny slice of time!

The experience was exactly what we were hoping to find… a small family owned vineyard and winery with excellent quality, a small environment, and kind, down to earth people to talk with.  There’s some huge thing to say about family owned places that care about quality of life.

Thank you Carol and Franco for giving us our first Paso wine experience of tremendous caliber, and can’t wait for our family and friends to visit from New England so we can bring them to your special place (we’ve already told them about you two and your winery!)”