Social Media and Paso Robles Wine Country Visit

My family and I spent a couple of days, visiting the city of El Paso de Robles in central California. This area is home for many fine California red wine producers and casual restaurants. We decided to avoid the formal travel guides and the official web sites and take a risk based on the recommendations of just one traveller in his Yelp post. We visted the vineyards he wrote about, sampled the wine and bought some bottles.

View of the Eberle vineyard from the winery.

In the first vineyard we visited, as the reviewer wrote in Yelp, the tasting room staff were very courteous and helpful. We even got a private tour of the cave, a 16000 square feet cellar underground where they store their wine barrels without expensive air conditioning.  In another small vineyard the owner opened a few bottles for us, minutes before he was joined by his family members for dinner, even though his tasting room was not open for the day.

I think relying on social media paid off for us and benefited those businesses. The owners of the vineyards were very social media savvy and said that they promote their products via Facebook and twitter. But they were not sure about the percentage of sales they got from such social media efforts.

Dinner was at Basil Thai. Yes. We researched the restaurant in Urbanspoon for reviews by actual people who ate there, before we went there.