In the picture above I’m chatting with Gary Eberle at the start of the Paso Robles winery cookoff last summer. This is an event that Gary organized to raise money for college scholarships for local kids.
Gary is more than just a winemaker and a gentrified vintner. He is the Godfather of the Paso Robles wine industry and a pillar of the community, where he settled more than 30 years ago after starring in football at Penn State University.
He learned his winemaking at UC-Davis and was one of the earliest pioneers in Paso Robles wine. He introduced Syrah to the region in the 1970s, and has long produced one of the best Paso Robles Cabernets.
The thought that Paso might one day be counted among the finest wine regions in California might have occured to Eberle, but few others shared that sentiment when the Eberle Winery first opened its doors.
I was sitting about 20 feet from Eberle on Sunday when his 2007 Barbera swept the prize as Best of Show red wine at the 28th annual San Diego International Wine Competition. The judges had their hands raised and the counters were counting and Big Daddy Eberle, one of the 34 judges, was tapping his feet and nodding his head.
He knew what none of the other voters knew, for they were tasting and voting “blind”, meaning they were unaware of the identity of the wine.
“I knew it was my wine,” Eberle told me shortly after the winning wine was unveiled. “I know that taste.”
It was a good moment to be Gary Eberle. He had another wine, the 2003 Eberle Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, in the Sweepstakes vote for Best of Show red, and life was good, for Gary Eberle is a true believer in the intrinsic value of wine competitions.
He espouses the virtues of gold medals everywhere he goes, and has told me many times that medals boost his sales. Every year he ponies up the entry fees and sends his wines off to several carefully chosen competitions, knowing that his wines are good and will win their share of the gold.
And so it was on Sunday as I smiled and thought how fitting it was that the Godfather of Paso Robles wine had finally walked off with the big prize from one of my wine competitions. No one has ever deserved it more.
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