Pulchella Winery is the brain child of troublemakers, Nate Hasper and Steve Lemley.
This crazy idea started in Paso Robles in late 2005. After experimenting for many
years seperately, Nate and Steve joined forces and created the winery with the the binding
agent being a collective, raw and intense passion for extracted custom
wines without any compromise.
Although schooling "the rules" is an important backbone for winemaking, our winemakers
quickly respected but grew bored of the wines it produces and the concept
in general... They use their schooling as a reminder of how "the rules"
work and then break them. They don't follow any trends, recipes or a lecture in a text
book to produce our wines. They fuel their passion everyday by pushing the
envelope and breaking "the rules" in order to make each vintage a
custom reflection on improvement.
"Our vineyards are farmed exactly how they should be...
Our wines are big and extracted... Thats how we like it...
Uncompromised!!!"
Nate and Steve are our only employees who control
100% of all winemaking decisions and activities from grape
to bottle. They work in each of our vineyards very closely to control low yields and
deeply rooted grapes that offer a true reflection of the calcareous shale terroir that Paso
Robles’s custom wines are famous for. This farming approach allows our
winemakers to focus on very intense flavors married with crisp and vibrant natural acidity
and structured tannins. The perfect trio for an uncompromised
approach, if farmed correctly.
Winemaking
Nate and Steve are very simplistic in the winery... They hand harvest every one of our
vineyards and whole berry ferment in small open top bins with minimum interaction
to allow the wine to build its own character. Natural yeast is used when it benefits the variety.
The thought here is that the wines character is decided on the vine. It's quality is decided by the
winemaker. We dont try to cross the line with this approach and choose to let the vineyards
characteristics take center stage as we make the wine to the best
extraction, intensity and quality we can.
Producing approx. 1000 cases each vintage of Grenache, Syrah, Tannat,
Tempranillo, Zinfandel, Petite Sirah and Reserve Blends.
Purchasing Our Wines:
Our wines are available to our wine Club Members (The Cult) and guests visiting our tasting room.
Also available for limited amounts of time online by CLICKING HERE.
All releases typically sell out within one year of availability and before their potential.
If you enjoy your allocation, we suggest you tuck a few more away before its sold out.
Although this adventure started in Paso Robles and our hearts are truly tied to the
Paso area, our winemakers live in Santa Clarita California which is located about 30
miles north of Los Angeles. Along with our tasting room, our production
facility has now been relocated to Santa Clarita as well.
The atmosphere of the tasting room is very comfortable, laid back and relaxing with ample
seating room. Our heated patio is open for picnics and tastings as well.
We welcome you to bring your own food in at all times. Our winemakers are in the
tasting room quite often, personally walking each guest down their dirt road of passion.
Our tasting room is located at 24261 Main Street in the Oldtown Newhall
historical district. (91321).
Tasting Room Hours of Operation:
Wednesday - Friday: Open for wine tasting 5pm to 10pm.
Saturday: Open 2pm to 10pm.
Our Name:
Many tasting room guests ask us what the word Pulchella means... While Nate and Steve
were busy with harvest duties in 2005, they were visited by a dragonfly late one fall
evening and the antics of the dragonfly in the winery touched them both enough
to name the newly born winery after the species of dragonfly that visited them that night.
We are still consistantly visited by the same rare species during harvest.
Pulchella (Libellula pulchella) is a common North American skimmer
dragonfly, found in the cental coast wine regions and many other locations within
the contiguous U.S. states. Each wing has three black spots. In
adult males, additional white spots form between the black
ones and at the bases of the hindwings.
