Page 99 - SLO Visitors Guide Spring 2024

Wine Tasting
New wine experience opens
at The Blending Lab in downtown
Discover your wine preferences through blind tastings and blending classes
For a personalized, unique, and exciting wine experience, look no further than The Blending Lab in downtown Paso Robles. Owners Michael Keller, Magdalena Wojcik, and Chris Payne encourage locals and visitors to stop by and discover their wine preferences through blind tastings and classes.
“This is a safe space to be whether you know very little about wine or you know a lot,” Wojcik says. “Everyone starts off at the same level with a blind tasting. You will be learning from us, yes, but we are all about learning from one another while enjoying wine with an open mind.”
The concept for The Blending Lab came about through conversa- tions the three friends had during
a travel break from their corporate marketing jobs. That led to the 2016 opening of their first location in Los Angeles. The “wine-matching service” where they help people discover their personal wine prefer- ences through classes and sampling of wine flights, proved to be a hit.
Grapes sourced from Westside AVAs
From day one, 90% of the grapes they use are sourced from vineyards in the Templeton Gap, Adelaida, and Willow Creek. In the summer of 2023, their dream of opening a second location in Paso Robles became a reality.
“In addition to the grapes, what has always piqued our interest about the community of Paso and the wine market here is how the people are more open-minded,” Keller says. “That works well with our business concept which is to
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bring an open mind to wine in order to better understand it. We want to break down any barriers in regard to presumptuousness about wine that can sometimes turn people away. In Paso, we can be far more experimental, and the people here embrace that idea as well.”
The trio likes to source inter- esting varietals and say the local vineyards are accommodating in this way.
“We can then bring these vari- etals into a blending class without having to worry about the stigma of rules that are often associated with bringing certain types of wine together,” Keller explains. “We encourage people in our classes and our tasting areas to be experimen- tal, explore their preferences, and ask questions.”
Bending the rules
Being experimental and blending wines to one’s personal preference came about in the early days of The Blending Lab. Keller and Wojcik, partners in life and business, and Payne like to break traditional barriers and bend the rules a bit.
Learn how to blend wine to please your personal palate.
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