Niner Winery - ES DOES PASO ROBLES

By Kelly Grace Thomas, Edible Skinny

Niner Winery in Paso Robles is without a doubt the best restaurant Edible Skinny has visited all year. With their astounding view of the estate, including Heart Hill, food grown a few feet from your table, and the juxtaposition of idiosyncratic textures and flavors, Niner has mastered the ultimate edible experience. Their staff is not only friendly and beyond knowledgeable, but talk about food and wine as if the closest thing to their heart. They describe each flavor profile or big red as if speaking about a dear friend, or favorite memory. They highlight each flirt and quirk to create the most provocative and divine pairings. 

Niner, voted 2017’s Best Winery Restaurant in America by Food and Wine Magazine, says, “Everyone talks about farm to table cuisine; our goal is to live it.” And that is exactly what they do. Executive chef, Maegen Loring, takes pride in every ingredient. He is invested from first sprout to last bit.  This is not farm to table, its backyard to table.  A place where your food is grown a few feet away. Niner, regulates quality, with 100% care and supervision. Nothing is too small to be looked over and cared for. With over 200 acres their outstanding wines are 100% estate grown, the chicken eggs come from chef’s house, their shelter (that they frequently escape from) was built by the winemaking team, and they feed on leftover veggies grown from their Estate Garden & other compostable from the restaurant. We were told by Sam, Niner’s Restaurant and Events Manager that Loring even meets and visits with the cows. 

 

Throughout our meal we paired Niner’s amazing wines, with food inspired by creativity and daring dazzle. Starting from white to red, we first enjoyed the Marsanne, which Sam called his “daily drinker.” which first sips soft and then opens up. This was perfect pairing with our appetizer of burrata with grilled peaches and beets. A creamy dive into ripe summer time flavors.  We also sampled Niner’s Chardonnay which is one of the most balanced buttery minerally chardonnays we have ever had. This complemented Niner’s Ricotta Tart made with lemon, ricotta, asparagus, mixed greens, garden herbs. The super flaky croissant crust and turmeric lemon zest from garden was light but decadent. 

Next we tried the Pinot Noir which was Kelly and Kat’s Favorite.  From Coastal Vineyard Jespersen Vineyards this wine is describe by Niner as, “quiet but impressive with aromatics of blueberry, black raspberry and cloves. Niner’s Pinot Noir, “slowly wake up as you swirl this wine in your glass.”

Next we had the Flatiron Steak pineapple salsa, coconut risotto, pear mint jalapeno chutney. A traditional dish with a non-traditional approach, this combination of flavors not usually found together gives Los Angeles restaurants a run for their money. This paired nicely with Niner’s Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, a nice fireplace wine. This wine is rich a rounded with black currant, tobacco, dried herbs. Also on the palate black cherry, dark chocolate and dried sage are balanced for a long elegant finish. We also enjoyed their Super Paso, a wine that, “This wine pays homage to the Super Tuscan winemakers who scorned convention in order to create unique blends.” This blend drinks with the confidence of a great wine and the Paso region, a paradise gaining more and more much deserved attention. The Super Paso was one of Edible Skinny’s favorite reserves.  It’s reminded us of “a dark wood kitchen with stone hearth and copper kettles.” There was a traditional sense of taste and history. 

 

To finish our meal we sipped on a French press barrel-aged Coffee aged in Niner’s Syrah barrel and roasted locally by Joebella Coffee exclusively for Niner Wine Estates.  This coffee with accents of wine, was one of the most luxurious experiences Edible Skinny has encountered, and trust us, we have had a few. That paired with the panna cotta with blood orange, albarino, candied orange was a heavenly final note. 

From start to finish Niner restaurant and wines are a showcase of both grace and gusto. Their dedication to the freshest flavors juxtaposed with creative culinary combinations makes Niner one of our favorite dining experiences in the state.

Paso Robles – The Uncharted Wine Getaway

By Kat Thoma, Editor in Chief, Edible Skinny

A few weeks ago Edible Skinny was lucky enough to tour the wine wonders of Paso Robles.  Now we’ve done California vino before with jaunts to Napa, Sonoma, Santa Barbara, and Temecula, but this was our first delving into the world of Paso.  It was an uncharted wine getaway, the perfect excuse for Kat and Kelly to hop in the car and discover all that this growing wine region has to offer. 

 

Paso Robles is located approximately halfway between the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco.  It is a community in the process of defining itself as an independent wine region.  Cabernet is most widely planted grape in the area.  It is primarily shipped North to more notable wine regions such Napa and Sonoma as filler wine; but the times they area a changing.  

The booming Paso Robles wine region is now home to more than 100 tasting rooms and more than 200 wineries.  This translates to over 32,000 acres of vineyards on which about 40 varietals of wine grow.  This expanding wine region now gets 1 million visitors per year (Napa by contrast gets 3.5 million visitors). 

 

The “Templeton Gap,” a notch in the coastal Santa Lucia mountain range, allows marine air to cascade inland and across the Paso Robles wine country.  This cooling influence fosters quality and complexity in the local wines as temperature swings of 50 degrees within a 24-hour period are not uncommon during the late summer months.  About two-thirds of Paso Robles wineries produce less than 5,000 cases. In other words, they are smaller, more boutique wineries.  And so, Edible Skinny delighted in diving into the world of the emerging wine region of Paso Robles.     

JUSTIN Winery

We started our wine weekend with one of Paso’s biggest JUSTIN Winery.   JUSTIN is one of the largest wineries in the area producing 180,000 cases per year on 1,000 acres of property.  

Our server Mark was the perfect pour-er, being present when needed and scare when not (he recommended always to toast from the bowl of the wine glass… “No clink when you drink….”).  Mark noted the “tasting is about trust”  Some of favorites included the Right Angle, a wine that is only available onsite.  As Mark noted, “it’s my Tuesday wine.”

But the most famous wine made by JUSTIN is their Isosceles.  Named after the triangle that has a ratio with two sides of equal length Isosceles is a combination of lots of Cabernet and equal pats Cabernet Franc and Merlot.  Kelly chirped in that the wine “makes me want to be in the bathtub.”  We finished this off with the Isosceles Reserve, an elusive wine as they only make 350 cases per year, making it only available to members of the Isosceles Wine Club.  With a mouth swirling of Blackberry Pucker and Ruby Raspberry Kelly commented, “it tastes like the first day of fall when you build a fire.”  

Must Have Items For Summer Domination

Must Have Items For Summer Domination

By Kat Thomas, Edible Skinny

Hello Summer!!!  Here at Edible Skinny we’re ready for beach/pool season to start with those things called Fun and Sun!   So with that in mind we’ve created a list of “Must Have Items For Summer Domination”!  Below are some recommendations for your July/August weapon of choice, but remember with great power comes great responsibility…

To Dominate People’s Memories - Vilhelm Parfumerie’s Harlem Bloom Perfume

The sense of smell is more linked with memory than any of our senses, so make this summer memorable with a new perfume!  For something exotic check out Vilhelm Parfumerie’s Harlem Boom.  Inspired by founder John Ahlgreen’s New York backyard, Harlem Bloom is an ode to the place he calls home where resilient flowers grow on, behind, in-between, and beside buildings that have lined the streets for the past century.   With notes of Angelica Seeds, Saffron, and Violet this scent is an exotic flower in an urban jungle.   Here’s to making memories that will haunt you future ex-lovers for years to come.  Available online at barneys.com and online.

To Dominate With Animal Badass-ery - MelJo JoJo Prints

It’s a jungle out there, so your walls should be decorated accordingly.  Iowa based artist MelJo JoJo has designed a literal burlesque art menagerie.   Her playfully prima  There’s Bayou Betty with a body to die for and an alligator head that will chomp away when she catches you starring at her curves.  Or the Bear Naked Lady, who’s both a naked lady and a beast worthy of battling Leonardo DiCaprio.  You can snatch up her designs at: meljojojo.com.

l prints combine classic pin-up bodies and poses with zoo animal heads.

To Dominate with that Killer Bod - Fascia Blaster

Welcome to the world of Fascia, a portion of your body you’ve probably never heard of, but effects every aspect of your health.  Fascia is the head-to-toe, fingertip-to-fingertip, inside-to-out connective tissue.  It’s the spider webbing that keeps your brain in your skull, your muscles in line, and your organs where they’re supposed to be.  And when it’s tangled you get “knots” in your body aka Cellulite.   Enter Ashley Black, who cured herself of a series of painful structural issues by healing her fascia, and in the process found a way to eliminate one of the female body’s most dreaded enemies.  

“We’re told that having cellulite means we need to reduce our body fat, when in reality, it’s caused by fascial distortions that pull down on the skin, creating those dents and divots we call cellulite. The appearance of the dimples is definitely very real, but the cause is different from what we’ve been told.”  Once you realize that “cellulite” is really fascia distortion, you realize that you can sculpt your fascia to decimate those “issue areas.  All you need to do is blast your trouble zones with the FasciaBlaster® on bare skin with oil, rubbing briskly up and down and side to side.  Be forewarned, you must be prepared for the ramifications, your body will bruise up and down as blood flow is restored in areas it had previously been blocked.  But with a body to die for at the beach this summer, what’s a dramatic bruise or two?

To Dominate with Flexibility – Gaiam Yoga Block and Strap

Daily life can be quite a hurricane at times.  Inspirational posters note we should be like palm trees in a storm since they are designed perfectly to bend when winds try to huff and puff and blow houses down.  So reapplying that metaphor back to daily life, you can allow yourself to dominate through flexibility, body flexibility that is.  Enter Gaiam’s Yoga Blocks and Straps which allow you to be more Gumby-like.  

Sure the yoga mat gets all the glory, but blocks and straps allow you to deepen your stretches and improve balance.  Blocks allow people to hold postures longer and guide proper alignment.  Straps aid in allowing you to reach places you haven’t reached before.  Both will help you become more flexible in your body, which translates to being more flexible in life in general.  Plus, it’s always cool to impress people by touching those toes!  

Kat Thomas is the Editor in Chief of Edible Skinny, a site dedicated to making your life postcard worthy.  She is also the CEO of the creative media company This Way Adventures.  You can find more about both brands at www.thiswayadventures.com