Wine Tasting at Filipponi Ranch Winery

Alena and I were up in San Luis Obispo for a long weekend to attend my cousin’s wedding. As I have never been wine tasting in this area, of course we had to make a stop at a local winery on one of our free days. I found Filipponi Ranch in a google search. The diverse grape selection they offered, small lot, local feel and the historical family story led me to choose them as our destination.

Similar to last year when we were in Monterey for a wedding and visited Pierce Ranch, Filipponi’s Spanish and Portuguese varietals attracted my attention.

It is a tasting room I have passed by countless times swing their “wine tasting” sign off of highway 101 on my drives between Santa Barbara and Northern California. But as I am also rushing to or from family and home, I have never stopped to taste.

Filipponi Ranch is a beautiful little winery and tasting room, just south of San Luis Obispo proper. Their tasting room is in the renovated original family home on the family ranch.

We were hosted by Julie, whose grandfather immigrated from Switzerland in the early 1900’s and founded a dairy farm on the land. Just over a decade ago the family began making small batches of wine in the old milking barn. Now they produce a variety of very small batch varietals including native Spanish, Portuguese and French grapes.

They offer a tasting flight of your choice of 5 of their wines which you get to choose from their offering. When we were their they had 9 wines to choose from, 4 whites and 5 reds.

Alena and I shared a tasting, choosing to try 3 whites and 2 reds.

We started off with the 2017 Verdelho. Seeing their offering of this traditionally Portuguese varietal was one of the reasons I wanted to visit Philipponi Ranch. It is a rare grape in California. Their wine was very aromatic with lots of floral and hay notes on the nose. The wine was dominated by lemon and citrus flavors with a hint of floral. It was not my favorite to drink, but would probably pair well with a flakey white fish meal. Which makes a lot a sense given it’s Portuguese roots as when we were in Portugal this was one of the most common dishes around!

Next we tried the 2018 Albarino which had a lot of sweet stone fruit on the nose. It’s taste was dominated by the flavor of dried apricot that really lingered on the palate. I ended up buying a bottle of this wine with plans to pair it with some goat cheese and crackers as a nice appetizer!

The last white wine we tried was the 2017 Chardonnay. It had light oak and butter smell to it. It was a pretty light Chardonnay that was on the drier side. The wine seemed like it was trying to be a more fruit forward chard, but was missing some fruit structure so it was a bit thin overall

Alena and I moved onto tasting some reds, starting with the 2016 Tempranillo. This is a varietal I am often fond of. Philipponi Ranch’s take on this Spanish wine was quite fresh and fruity. It did not have much of that dry dusty flavor you find in most Tempranillo, but I was tasting some tomato notes on the end which was interesting.

Next up was a bonus wine our host Julie thought we should try: the 2015 Lorenzo, a GSM blend. It was floral smelling with rose, red berries and just a hint of vanilla. It’s flavor was darker than expected with dried plum and baking spices. The blend was a smooth wine that was nice to drink on its own or could have held up to food as well.

Last on our tasting was Philipponi Ranch’s 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon. It smelled like blueberry pie to me! It had a fruit forward berry flavor and was lighter than most cabs.

That wrapped up our wine tasting at Philipponi Ranch. It was a beautiful and relaxed setting and as we were the only visitors there at the time on a Thursday afternoon, we had Julie and her wonderful stories all to ourselves. It would be a fun spot with a group as well as they have a large outdoor seating area with lawn games and shade.

It was not somewhere I would plan a visit to San Luis Obispo around, but it is definitely worth popping into Philipponi Ranch to taste their diverse wine selection and relax in historic tasting room if you are in the area!

Cheers!

-Alan Evans