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100 WINTER 2025 slovisitorsguide.com
Wine Tasting
Scan the QR code for more information on our
tasting experiences and current hours.
6169 Airport Rd, Paso Robles, CA 93446
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J. LOHR IS PURE PASO®
Warm hospitality, exciting tasting experiences,
and sensational wines.
Explore the sustainable, eco-friendly
charm of Shale Oak Winery
On an unassuming road just
off Highway 46 lies Shale Oak
Winery. With its multicolored
stained-glass windows and slanted
roof, it looks like a church. How-
ever, instead of serving up sermons,
they serve up high-quality wine in
their SIP-certified tasting room.
At Shale Oak Winery, they’ve
taken sustainability in practice
a step further by designing their
entire facility to be Gold LEED
Certified. LEED stands for leader-
Discover Shale Oak
Winery’s innovative
practices and a unique
approach to wine
ship, energy, and environmental
design. According to LEED, “The
LEED plaque on a building is a
mark of quality and achievement in
green building.”
Owner Al Good dreamed of
a vineyard, winery, and tasting
room with very little impact on the
environment. His dream became
a reality. Everyone at Shale Oak is
committed to the vision of sustain-
ability. Lead Winemaker, Curtis
Hascall, has been with the winery
from the beginning and is equally
committed to Good’s vision. “From
the beginning, one of our goals was
to get that Gold Certification; so,
we worked with Studio 2G Archi-
tecture down in San Luis Obispo.
They helped guide us in that direc-
tion. We opened the production
facility and did our first harvest in
2010, and then the tasting room
opened in 2011.”
Despite the beautiful stained
glass, the tasting room was not
designed to look like a church but
instead to reclaim water. Both the
tasting room and production facil-
ity have pitched roofs so rainwater
will go down the slope of the roof.
It then passes through drip chains
and is filtered through the rocks.
It then goes to the reclamation
pond/water feature just outside the
tasting room. The pond then flows
into a pipe that flows directly to the
catch basin that pumps the water to
5 hundred-thousand-gallon tanks.
The roofs are pitched so perfectly
that water beads up during a heavy
fog, and, of course, that is also
collected.
“My favorite part is the water
collection because that’s such a big
issue around here, and to capture
all that clean water is beneficial for
our vineyards and our landscape.
It’s cleaner water than the well wa-
ter around here. It’s not the cheap-
est thing to set up. It’s not economi-
cally the best, but it’s important.”
What else makes the buildings
and property so special? The whole
property is set up so all rainwater
will flow in the direction of the
catch basin. The wood you see as
you walk up to the front door is
reclaimed wood from a train trestle
from Vandenberg Space Force Base.
The counters are recycled crushed
glass. The cabinets are bamboo. The
bathrooms smell like sulfur because
they use reclaimed groundwater.
The buildings are all solar, and
they’re smart. Many of the windows
have motors on them, and if the
temperature outside drops below
the temperature inside they auto-
matically open and fans pull the
cool air inside. The building also
senses when someone has left, and
automatically turns the heater off.
The fireplace burns denatured alco-
hol which only emits water vapor.
Their motto is “sustainability to the
forefront,” and it’s evident through-
out the property.
The same attention to detail
they put in the buildings has gone
into the winemaking. According
to Hascall, “Our varietals are the
best of Paso. We have Rhône’s. We
have Bordeaux. We have Zinfandel.
We have a good mix of everything
that I feel grows well in the area.
Everything is from Paso Robles.
Everything is done in small lots.
Nothing is more than a couple hun-
It’s all about enjoying the wine.