James S.
Yelp
I am so excited to do a review about Tin City. It is an up-and-coming area in Paso Robles / Templeton that has a few select tasting rooms from low yield owners/vintners. I will tell you about the other places in my other reviews, however In fairness to Levo I want to make this review solely about them.
Levo is physically located at 2975 Limestone Way in Paso Robles California 93446. If you want to contact the owner his name is Bret and you'll find him very accommodating and if you google Levo... Paso Robles.... You will find his contact information.
I have a lot of energy to tell you about the wines, however I'm going to give you drama and intrigue first. This was our second tasting room for the day so our taste buds were primed and we were ready for some red. We walked into a very unassuming Tasting Room rather plain, but in a super cool way. The surfer dude / kinda hippie guy, but clean was serving up some reds, whites and rosés.
He was super chill and served up the wine and we were sipping. He was explaining as best he could the process of the winemaking and the notes that we may be picking up. It was laid back relaxing and pretty cool. I took a look at their reviews and was amazed that they were all 5 stars. Not that the wine was not good, however regardless of how great a place is it's rare that everybody gives 5 stars and they kept talking about Bret and what a unique, realized person he was.
I asked surfer dude if he was Bret and he stated that he was not and that Bret was the wine genius and owner and the rest of the conversation led us to believe that he and Bret were really tight friends.
That is when the total weirdness happened!!!! In walks a gentleman and a female accomplice.
They walk behind the bar and the female drops her backpack on the ground says, I got this and turns to us as if nothing had changed and asked what wine was next. The gentleman who turned out to be Bret, the owner asked hippie surfer dude if he could see him in the back.
Some time past and the surfer dude comes out completely flat affect and goes over, puts his ball cap on, grabs his iPhone takes it off of the music sound box, makes no eye contact with any of us, looks as if he's near tears walks out grabbing his surfboard before exiting. Persona non-grata Total mind melt for me.
No one else seemed to notice the complete energy shift, however I am a paid observer so for me the air was thick enough to cut with a steak knife and the energy felt like Mercury just suddenly slammed into retrograde. Totally weird right? Hippie, surfer dude in good mood assumably has committed some picadillo and gets redressed for it and is invited to leave immediately.
Now Brett is a businessman, one can tell takes care of his wine literally from dirt to bottle and I'm so serious when I say that. It took him less than 5 minutes to bring the energy level back to something that was not the same, but almost equal in enjoyment, but in a different way. He brought an in charge knowledge and presence and kind of a commanding energy.
Okay so now that all the Intrigue has gone to the wayside I see that I have way over extended my review so a little bit about the wines. I thought the reds were really good some of them better than good some of them on the waxing side of good, however I have had better and I have had way worse. It seems like he breaks some of the rules and that works in his favor. I am not a white wine kind of guy, but found his crisp, refreshing and full of a pear being assaulted by an apple kind of gripping flavor. I hate rosés, I don't drink them and don't understand why anyone would. I tasted their Rosé and thought wow this is something on a hot summer day with a crisp fresh fruit salad I would actually drink.
The Experience left a mark on me and I can't really say that it is negative and I can't really say it's positive either it just was the most memorable experience of that day. I wish I were a fly in that back room just for that five minutes.
So why just four stars other than the fact that it's really hard to get 5 stars out of me? Business is business, handle yours out of sight of your customer. I will absolutely go back and I would 100% recommend anyone else to stop by.
