Full Belly Files | Back to the Firestone Walker Beer Fest

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Wine fanatics can be a wacky bunch, especially when hyper-focused on which vineyard or vintage or vintner is worth the hunt and the money. But I’m pretty sure that beer nuts are a far more committed and crazy breed. For starters, many of them just look a little edgier, with their tattoos, beards, kilts, pretzel necklaces, and so forth. But their deep fanaticism is most evident in their willingness to endure seemingly endless lines under the hot sun for a small sip of the next coveted brew.

I was reminded of that last Saturday, when I returned to the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Festival for the first time since 2018. By then, I’d attended FWIBF for three or four years in a row, joined in most of those appearances by my good buddy Dr. Cracker, who was my partner-in-crime for 2024 as well. (Though he is a doctor, that’s not his real name. I don’t even know where I came up with that, but it appeared in this 2018 roundup, so I’ll stick with it.)

After dropping our cars and bags at the Kiler Canyon Ranch rental owned by ONX Winery — an epic spot to stay, surrounded by vines and views in all directions, yet just eight minutes from downtown Paso — the good doctor and I plotted our attack for Saturday’s affair. With 68 breweries in attendance and more than 250 beers being poured, strategies could go any which way, from tracking down specific beer styles to finding the ones with the best merch to just hitting brands you’ve never heard before.  

We decided to mostly focus on breweries from other countries, which we thought was a manageable category, especially since we knew we were only going to be there for about two hours. (That’s the right amount of time for people in their mid-forties, we’ve decided.) The bonus was that we had media passes, which got us in an hour early before the aforementioned lines started to pile up.

Well, we broke that strategy before ever enacting it, making our first stop for Pliny the Elder from Russian River Brewing Company, always a solid introduction to a celebration of craft and cult brews. Then we were off on our mission, drinking colorful Norwegian beer by Lervig Brewery, Italian sours and pils by Birrificio Italiano, the Aussie inspirations of Balter Brewing (loved the Harvesting Sunshine!), and Japanese flavors of yuzu and bonito flake by Yoho Brewing Company. (Their Sorry Nippon Citrus Ale with yuzu and sea salt was my favorite of the day, and the bonito flake, if you’re wondering, was more umami-driven than fishy.)

But there’s something addictive about a line. In years past, we watched as the crowds came in and identified, by their sheer standing masses, which of the breweries inspired hour-long waits. One of those was always Garage Project, a Wellington, New Zealand–based brewery that goes over the top on many of their beers, layering in separate fluids to build flavors like a cocktail.

Even early in the media hour, a line formed before their taps. Surmising that this would be the quickest chance to get a taste, Dr. Cracker and I went for it. It took about 20 minutes, but the doc chose wisely, opting for the Sunset Sherbert, a “milkshake sour” with flavors of mango, guava, and golden peach. “We waited a while,” said Dr. Cracker, looking at the orange and cherry-red liquids combining in his glass, of which I had to bum a confirmation sip. “But it’s pretty fucking good.” (My Big Feelings hazy was good but not mind-blowing.)

When the masses came in, Garage Project was indeed inundated, its line extending for at least one, maybe two football fields. The same could be said about Side Project from Maplewood, Missouri; 3 Floyds from Munster, Indiana; and Wildflower from Sydney, Australia. But there’s plenty for the line-averse as well, since FWIBF’s organizers manage the capacity wisely. That ensures that most booths — including tasty bites of ceviche from Firestone’s tap room, salty pasta from Etto Pastificio, and much more on the food front — had very little wait at all.

Lunch @ Clos Solène

Relatively sober upon escaping from the beer fest, we arrived in good spirits at Clos Solène, where Guillaume Fabre greeted us with rosé, white wine, and a simple, just-what-we-needed lunch of salad and grilled sandwiches. Fabre’s story is well-known in Central Coast viticultural lore, given that he comes from a long, well-established line of French vintners yet decided to settle down and establish his own estate in Paso Robles once he recognized the region’s potential.

His brother Arnaud Fabre came too, and together they make Benom Wines out of Tin City. But Guillaume’s primary attention goes to Clos Solène, the brand he named after his wife in 2007 when he officially decided not to return to the family business in France. Since acquiring the former Pipestone Vineyards in the coveted Willow Creek District on Paso’s Westside in 2017, the Fabres have been replanting much of the property in Rhône and Bordeaux grapes, from the richer soils down by the road all the way up to the insanely rocky hilltops.

Guillaume drove us up those steep hillsides, showing us where he’d just grafted some vaccarèse, a rare Rhône grape that’s very spry and peppery. Being Dr. Cracker’s first real vineyard tour, he was curious about the process and found a lot of similarities between how plant wounds and human wounds heal, which is his work.

A bit later, after seeing the tipi-trellised syrah and smelling the grapey floral aromas coming off of the cabernet franc on the lower vineyard, Dr. Cracker experienced his first barrel tasting. As is usual in my line of work, we tasted more than a dozen wines in rapid succession, so he was thankful for the advanced warning of what was to come.

The most enlightening was tasting three grenaches: one from a traditional oak barrel, the second from a glass globe, and the third from a sandstone amphora. We all thought the glass globe was the most precise, focused version of the grenache. Although it’s possible that we were just mesmerized by the glass vessel itself, which turned into a mirror when I zoomed my iPhone camera right at it.

In my blind tastings for Wine Enthusiast, the wines of Clos Solène always exhibit more grace than many other great bottlings, packing in layers of flavor and texture in ways that remain seamless and balanced. With the Fabres’ experience in their estate growing each vintage, I only expect that excellence to expand.

Dinner @ Stanley & Elena’s House

I feared that the beer fest and winery lunch might be too much to follow with a dinner at the private home of Stanley Barrios and Elena Martinez, the owners of TOP Winery. But I took their gracious invite anyway, and it may have been the wisest move of all.

After hearing much about their wines, I first met Stanley and Elena back in the summer of 2020, when the contagious fog of COVID and the smoke of wildfires was still very thick in the air. I’ve seen them a couple times since, most recently during a truffle hunt at Caelesta Vineyard in February. (I’m still due to write about that one, so stay tuned.)

Their story of falling in love with wine as Los Angeles residents and then working multiple jobs while commuting for hours to build that passion into a career isn’t particularly uncommon. But the fact that they are Latino winery owners — she’s of Mexican heritage; he’s often mistaken as Mexican but is actually Peruvian and Salvadoran — remains somewhat of an unfortunate rarity, even though so many employees of vineyards and wineries come from similar backgrounds.

Also in attendance were some Paso heavy hitters, like Juan Mercado of RIISE — who’s at all the cool-kid events I attend in Paso — Charles Liu of Séduire Wines, and Julien Asseo, the chef-owner of Les Petites Canailles. Many bottles of exquisite wines were popped, though the star of the show was the cochinita pibil that Stanley had been tending to all day. He learned such cuisine from his mom’s best friend, a woman originally from the Yucatán Peninsula who watched Stanley a lot when he was growing up.

The night quickly got late — Dr. Cracker even ducked out a touch early, soon after the magnum of Shafer was popped — but the memories remain mostly strong. I’m still thinking about the cochinita as I write this.

Alex’s Lemonade Stand This Saturday

After years of providing her seafood to support the Los Angeles iteration of the Alex’s Lemonade Stand, which raises money to fight childhood cancer, Stephanie Mutz of Sea Stephanie Fish is hosting a standalone benefit in Los Olivos this Saturday, June 8.

She’s hoping to raise at least $2,500, and is getting great donations and volunteers from the community, including lemonade provisions from Coast Range, Elder Flat, and Yeti, with tastings-for-donations from Holus Bolus, Storm, Demetria, Dafoe, Solminer, and Four Brothers.
Go check it out with your kids, or just donate directly via the flyer. Read more here.

Quick Hits: Gala, Backpacking, Molly’s Strawberry Cake

Just to catch up on some fun stuff that I’ve yet to write about:

• Though a bit chaotic with winemakers and pintxos-toting servers bouncing all over the place, Gala’s Pintxos & Pours event was quite a hit. My favorite pintxo was the shrimp-salad-stuffed piquillo pepper, though the egg-topped blood sausage was probably the visual treat. Of all the wines, I might have liked the first one best, especially for the food we were eating: a crisp albariño by Dolina.

• My friends and I took our annual backpacking trip over Memorial Day weekend. You may recall it being called the Death March over the years, then the Life March when co-founder Chris Potter got sick, and now maybe just the Chris Potter Memorial March, since he died in February. About 20 of us went about seven miles deep into the backcountry this year, and we still went big on food: handrolls of ahi and ocean trout, miso-udon noodle soup, tiramisu (twice!), pork belly bites, stuffed baked potatoes, fire-roasted spiced apples, and Chef Peter McNee’s carbonara known as “Juan Charlie” (someone last year couldn’t pronounce “guanciale”) were just some highlights.

• Speaking of Chris Potter, we threw a 16th surprise party for his daughter, Zenia, last Friday. Everything was sweet, including the car that our friends gave her, but the sweetest was the strawberry cake baked by Molly Holveck. Molly co-owns the Live Oak Café, where she quietly puts her badass baking skills to work every single day. Go buy her stuff if you haven’t already.

From Our Table

Here are some stories that you may have missed:

• Leslie Dinaberg rounded up a few recent fundraisers run by wineries.

• I wrote about Colin McNany and how the ocean influences his MarBeso wines.

• The Santa Barbara Greek Festival is back after a pandemic hiatus, this time serving up eats, drinks, and dance down at Chase Palm Park. I interviewed a few fest veterans here.

• Nick Welsh got as many details as he could related to the current status of Arnoldi’s Café.

• After reading a story about changing her winery’s name in her wine club newsletter, I asked Sonja Magdevski if we could run her piece in the Indy, and she was game. Here it is.