The spirit of Friday night, and the need to enjoy some social time with my co-workers, I was off to Paso Wine Centre (this wine bar doesn’t have a web site but check out Paso Winos’ very informative blog). I walked into the modernly designed room complete with hardwood floors, stainless steel counters, and black leather box-shaped couches to find myself staring at a wall of wines. These wines were hooked up to a gadget that looked like a cross between a display case and a beer tap, it’s an enomatic wine-dispensing machine. This machine removes excess air from the wine bottles allowing an open bottle’s shelf-life to be extended to up to three weeks.
“Wall of wines” is not an exaggeration; Paso Wine Centre offers their patrons the chance to taste from almost fifty different wines, most of which find their origins within the Paso Robles Wine region. And just in case that isn’t enough to peak your interest, they also offer twice as many bottles for purchase. Once we broke the trance that the wall of wine had over us, Beth, my Friday night partner, and I walked up to the register to charge our credit-cardesque looking wine-cards so we could begin tasting from “the wall.”
Paso Wine Centre is a great place to taste a lot of wines for a reasonable price. First, charge your card with money, then use that card in the wine machine to purchase 1 oz. pours ranging in price from about $1.25 to $3.00. And, as if the selection and the ability to try so many different wines didn’t already wow me, I felt even better knowing that for each sip I purchased raised money for a good cause. 100% of profits from the Centre goes to their charity, Wine for Water.
Wine for Water is a non-profit dedicated to bring clean drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene education to people around the world. A quick browse through their website taught me some alarming facts: 1 billion people don’t have daily access to clean and safe drinking water, and every day 6,000 people die from diseases caused by drinking unsafe water. Wine for Water is dedicated to building wells in areas where they can change these startling facts by bringing clean water to people in need. They have a great website that provides a lot more information about these problems and their mission to help people in need.
