The days leading up to Paso Robles Wine Festival were laden with wonder. I wonder if it’ll be roasting hot again this year for the park. I wonder if the people will show up. I wonder how busy we’ll be. At home, I take the pressure off of a big weekend like this by singing “It’s Festival time again” in a Frank Sinatra meets Will Ferrel imitating Robert Goulet sort of way. I know, I’m a bit weird. But if you’ve lived through festival weekends in the tasting room, you know you have to have a sense of humor about it all. It’s crazy.

So, Friday I took advantage of tickets my company had to get into the Reserve tasting in the park. I tried about 20-ish wines from all three sections, favoring the Reserve and Library wines side of the park. It was still roasting hot outside, but I enjoyed myself because I ran into a friend from school and because I was able to visit Andrew & Nicole at their table in the park too. Followed up by a margarita and a fantastic dinner at Thomas Hill Organics, I was charged up and ready for the festival weekend.

Saturday – the big dance. Typically this is the busiest day for us, and we would have SanTasti at the tasting room to help keep the folks pouring in cleansed before they hit our bar. One thing I love about having Nicole and Andrew at the tasting room is that everyone seems to stop and chat for a couple of minutes, and when they get to us, not only are they REALLY ready to taste, but they have great comments about the product, the idea, and the creators. Number one comment – “what a smart idea…and it works!” We know.

It was a pretty crazy day in the tasting room, but much more manageable than in the past. Typically for festival weekends we hit what I call “3-deep”, meaning that’s the number of bodies that get stacked into our tasting room to get their hands on the good juice. This festival, not so much. We barely hit “2-deep”….but our sales were fantastic. And, we did pretty darn well on selling SanTasti so folks could keep-on-keep-on-keep-on-keep-on-tastin’ on down the road…(I’m telling you, festival weekend makes you sing weird songs).

Now that the bulk of festivals are over (until October), I’m personally looking forward to getting back on the road and distributing for the team. What the people gotta know is that there is something to help make them smile…when wine tasting. Summer, here we come!!!