With more than 200 tasting rooms clustered between downtown and Highway 46, most visitors to Paso Robles wine country stick to a comfortable radius. That makes sense for a first trip. But some of the region’s most distinctive estates sit just outside the usual loop — wineries where the property itself is half the experience.
Copia Vineyards farms 50 acres of rolling Westside hillside along Mustard Creek Road, where a couple who traded engineering and fine dining careers for vineyard life now pour award-winning Rhône and Bordeaux blends with culinary pairings to match. Tackitt Family Vineyards started with 29 Gewürztraminer vines a grandfather brought home from Germany — and a retired Navy bomb disposal technician who turned them into a full winery on the Pleasant Valley Wine Trail. And Bovino Vineyards turned a multigenerational dairy farm into one of the El Pomar District’s most compelling small estates. Each one rewards the short drive with something you won’t find on the main drag.
Why These Three Estates Are Worth Seeking Out
Paso Robles has no shortage of tasting rooms where you can walk in, sample four wines, and leave. These three wineries offer something different: a sense of place that extends well beyond the glass. At each one, the land or the family history is inseparable from what ends up in the bottle.
They also sit in three entirely different parts of the region. Copia Vineyards occupies rolling Westside terrain in the Willow Creek and Adelaida districts. Tackitt Family Vineyards is 12 miles east of downtown in the Estrella District near San Miguel — proper back-road wine country. And Bovino Vineyards farms 45 acres on the Westside’s El Pomar Drive, in the heart of the Templeton Gap. Visiting all three in a single day is entirely doable — and gives you a cross-section of Paso Robles terroir that most weekend trips miss.
Copia Vineyards
Most winery origin stories start with a lifelong dream. Copia Vineyards started with an educational wine tour that went sideways — in the best possible way.
In the winter of 2015, Anita and Varinder Sahi visited Paso Robles as part of a wine education trip. Varinder had spent years globetrotting as an engineer, developing a serious appreciation for wine along the way. Anita had built her career working alongside fine restaurateurs and Michelin-starred chefs, sharpening an instinct for food and wine pairing that most winemakers never develop. They arrived as tourists. By 2016, they’d established Copia Vineyards on Paso’s Westside, and they never left.
What sets Copia apart is the combination of those two backgrounds. Varinder brings an engineer’s precision to viticulture — data-driven decisions about canopy management, irrigation, and harvest timing. Anita brings a restaurant professional’s understanding of how wine interacts with food, which shapes everything from blending decisions to the tasting room experience itself.
The Estate
Copia’s 50-acre estate sits along Mustard Creek Road in the Willow Creek and Adelaida districts — two of the most prized Westside growing areas in the Paso Robles AVA. The vineyard was established in 2019 with over 20 acres currently planted in Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Petit Verdot. The Westside location means cooler temperatures, more maritime influence, and wines with the kind of natural acidity and structure that reward a second glass.
The focus is on small-lot Rhône and Bordeaux blends — wines that reflect the specific blocks they come from rather than a house style designed for volume. Production stays intentionally small, which means the tasting room pours wines you won’t find in retail shops.
The Tasting Experience
For a deeper visit, the immersive Walking tour includes a greeting wine, a walk through the estate grounds, a barrel tasting of future releases, and a seated cellar experience with culinary provisions and wine flights. It’s the kind of experience that justifies clearing your afternoon.
The tasting room itself is modern and clean-lined, with indoor and outdoor spaces that frame views of the surrounding hillside. The setting is quieter and more personal than most — you’re on a working estate, not a commercial strip.
Address: 5076 Mustard Creek Rd, Paso Robles, CA 93446
Hours: Monday and Thursday–Sunday, 10 AM – 4 PM (closed Tuesday–Wednesday)
Reservations: Recommended via Tock, especially for the Culinary Pairing Experience
Local Tip: Mustard Creek Road is one of the more scenic back-road approaches on Paso’s Westside. If you’re combining Copia with other Westside wineries along Adelaida Road or Vineyard Drive, the drive itself becomes part of the experience — oak-studded hills, vineyard views, and almost no traffic.
Master Paso Robles with One Guide
Discover the best of Paso Robles wine country with detailed profiles of 27 essential wineries, 5 expertly curated itinerary ideas, and recommendations for every preference (like Best Views, Most Historic, Family-Friendly, etc.).
Expertly planned to minimize driving time, and full of insider tips for the best tasting experiences.
Tackitt Family Vineyards
The story starts in the 1970s, when Leon Tackitt’s grandfather brought 29 Gewürztraminer vine cuttings home from Germany and planted them on his Paso Robles property. They were a hobby — grapes for home wine, not commerce. They adapted to the soil and the climate and kept producing, year after year, for decades.
Fast forward to the mid-2000s: Leon Tackitt was approaching retirement from a 28-year career in the U.S. Navy as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technician — the people who disarm and dispose of bombs. He and his wife Cindy looked at the grandfather’s vines, still thriving on the family property in San Miguel, and decided to take them seriously. Tackitt Family Vineyards opened in 2007.
Today the estate grows Gewürztraminer and Petite Sirah on-site and sources additional fruit from neighboring vineyards within the Estrella District AVA to produce Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Zinfandel, Tempranillo, Sauvignon Blanc, and their signature blends. Total production stays in the boutique range — this is a winery where you will talk to the person who made the wine.
The Sparkling Wine Surprise
What most visitors don’t expect from a small family estate 12 miles east of downtown: Méthode Champenoise sparkling wine, made entirely in-house. Tackitt’s 2022 Sparkling Domaine de Blanc — crafted from French Colombard with secondary fermentation in the bottle and 26 months on the lees — has earned gold medal recognition. It’s traditional-method sparkling produced at a scale where Leon can manage every bottle personally. Ask about it in the tasting room — it’s the kind of pour that reframes what you thought a Paso Robles winery could do.
The Cabernet Sauvignon and the Melange blend have also earned Best of Class awards. The Estrella District’s warm days and cool nights give the reds concentration and ripeness without losing their balance.
The Property
Tackitt sits on Von Dollen Road in San Miguel, along the Pleasant Valley Wine Trail — a stretch of back-road wine country that feels a world apart from the Highway 46 corridor. The tasting room is intimate and unpretentious. Dogs roam the property. There’s a patio where you can spread out a picnic lunch and take in the country setting without another winery in sight.
The military heritage isn’t a gimmick — it’s woven into the winery’s identity and its charitable work. Tackitt hosts the annual EOD Warriors Helping Warriors event and supports the EOD Warrior Foundation through wine sales. It’s a veteran-owned operation where the welcome is warm, the conversation runs long, and the wines speak for themselves.
Address: 6640 Von Dollen Rd, San Miguel, CA 93451
Hours: Friday–Sunday, 12 PM – 5 PM (Monday and Thursday by appointment)
Local Tip: San Miguel is about a 15-minute drive northeast from downtown Paso Robles — far enough to thin the crowds, close enough to get back for dinner. The Pleasant Valley Wine Trail has several other small producers worth combining with a Tackitt visit if you want a full Eastside afternoon.
Bovino Vineyards
The name tells the story. “Bovino” is a portmanteau of bovine and vino — cattle and wine — and it captures a family transition that spans three generations. Dan Souza’s parents, Joe and Ludrie, started dairy farming in the area in 1949. Dan grew up on the farm, and when he decided to pivot from dairy to wine grapes, he planted the family’s 83.5-acre El Pomar Drive property with 45 acres of vines across 16 different varietals. The winery opened in 2018.
That might sound like a short history, but the land beneath the vines has a much longer one. Bovino sits in the El Pomar District of the Paso Robles AVA — Westside territory defined by the Templeton Gap’s marine influence, where ocean air funnels through a break in the coastal mountains and drops nighttime temperatures dramatically. The result: grapes that build deep color and flavor during warm days but retain the acidity that keeps wines from tasting flat or overripe.
Three Labels, One Estate
Winemaker Steve Anglim — whose philosophy is to help each grape realize its innate potential without getting in the way — works with the estate’s 16 varietals across three distinct labels:
Bovino is the primary label, covering the estate’s core range from Albariño to Cabernet Sauvignon to Syrah. The Joludi label (named for Joe and Ludrie) features bolder, more concentrated wines — the Zinfandel and Tempranillo under this label are standouts, full of dark fruit intensity without losing their sense of place. The third label, gen·er·os·i·ty, reflects the family’s commitment to giving back.
The Property
Bovino’s tasting room is architecturally distinctive — a modern structure with clean lines that contrasts with the pastoral vineyard setting around it. The outdoor deck offers sweeping views of the vines and surrounding hills, and the barrel caves provide an option for a more intimate tasting of wines not yet released.
The property feels genuinely personal. Dan and his family are often on-site, and the scale — 45 acres, not 1,000 — means you can see nearly the entire operation from the deck. It’s the kind of estate where you feel the family investment in every row.
Address: 5685 El Pomar Dr, Templeton, CA 93465
Hours: Monday 11 AM – 4 PM; Friday–Saturday 11 AM – 5 PM (closed Tuesday–Thursday and Sunday — check their website for current hours)
Local Tip: Bovino’s limited hours mean you need to plan around their schedule, not the other way around. A Friday or Saturday visit works best. The Winemaker’s Dinner events (typically $150–$175) are worth booking if your timing aligns — they’re intimate, multi-course affairs on the estate.
Free Download
Download Our Wine Trail Map Today
Before embarking on your next adventure, download the official Paso Robles wine trail map to navigate with confidence. This essential planning tool highlights each winery’s location and helps you craft the perfect tasting itinerary. A printed map proves invaluable as cell service can become intermittent along certain stretches of this picturesque route.
How to Visit All Three in One Day
These three estates span different corners of the region, but a single-day route works cleanly on a Friday or Saturday if you plan around Bovino’s limited hours.
Morning: Start at Copia Vineyards on Mustard Creek Road — they open at 10 AM, the earliest of the three. Book the Culinary Pairing or the immersive estate tour if you want to go deep. The Westside scenery along the drive in is worth savoring.
Midday: Head south to El Pomar Drive for Bovino Vineyards (about 20 minutes from Copia). The deck is at its best in the midday light, and the barrel caves offer a cool retreat if the afternoon is warm.
Afternoon: Drive east to San Miguel for Tackitt Family Vineyards (about 30 minutes from Bovino). The relaxed patio setting, picnic-friendly atmosphere, and conversation with Leon and Cindy make this the perfect way to wind down. Open until 5 PM on weekends.
For more routing ideas, check the Paso Robles wine tasting map or browse our full itinerary collection.
Three Reasons to Leave the Main Loop
The most popular Paso Robles tasting rooms are popular for a reason — they’re convenient, well-run, and pour excellent wine. But the estates that sit just outside that easy radius often deliver the kind of experience that sticks with you long after the trip: a Westside vineyard where an engineer and a restaurateur are crafting some of the region’s most thoughtful food-and-wine pairings, a back-road estate in San Miguel where a retired bomb disposal tech makes traditional-method sparkling wine by hand, a former dairy farm where 16 varietals grow on the same soil three generations of one family have worked.
These are the detours that make a Paso Robles trip feel like more than a tasting checklist. Check the winery directory for more estates worth discovering, or explore our lodging options if you’re planning to stay the night.
