Scott's Vintage in California: Post 12. Labour Day long weekend

Hi All,

As the title suggests, this weekend is a long weekend. I wasn't sure if I would be on the central coast for this weekend. As it turns out, I was and it was pretty cruzy with me not doing much. Due to the last couple of weekends being fairly busy I was happy to stay close to home base and explore the local area. This started on Saturday when I decided to drive up to Paso Robles to have a look around. Paso is about 30 miles north and there are a lot of vineyards there, mainly planted to Shiraz, Grenache, Cabernet and Zinfindel. I drove into town and discovered a "Classic Car Competition" going on which was pretty cool. California has a real car culture and there were some awesome hotrods and classics on show. After looking around I grabbed lunch at a local Mexican (Habanero's - awesome!) and headed to Avila beach which is not far from where i'm living. It was really hot so I went for a swim.

Sunday I headed up the coast and had a look at a couple of towns. The first was Moro Bay which is a bit like Lennox Head or Robe, not too big but plenty of people looking around. There is a huge rock which defines the bay (see below). From there I headed north and found a little town called Cambria. It was lunch so I headed for the nearest Mexican (Las Cambritas - can't get enough) and had another great meal. There was enough food for two and it only cost $20, including drinks. I had a wander around then came home.

Sunday I checked out some state parks along the coast. Nearly all of the trees in one park, Moro State park, were eucalypt trees; that was strange. I took a panoramic photo there of a meteorological phenomenon on the central coast, and along most of the Californian coast. It is fog. Very simply, it is caused by warm land areas interacting with the cold water of the ocean. It means that dense fog blankets a lot of the coast for much of most mornings. When I drove to L.A a couple of weekends ago it was very dense around the Santa Barbera area that visibility was down to about 30 m . I mention this because it impacts the growing of grapes in this area. It is very difficult to keep botrytis out of the fruit when much of the night and morning the vineyard is blanketed in fog, or "breeza", as it is in Spanish. Crews are kept busy dropping infected fruit to halt the spread. Check out the photo below. About 30 mins after it was taken the fog rolled in and cut visibility.

I went back to Moro Bay for lunch then after, headed to a place nearby called Grover beach but it was a bit chilly to swim