Ep 180: Wine Trends & Truth | Featuring WarRoom Cellars + Les Petites Canailles

🍇 Where Wine Takes You, Episode Highlights 🍷

Who actually decides what’s next in wine?

This episode puts that question in front of two people who see the consumer from very different sides of the table. Alex Wolfe, General Manager at Les Petites Canailles, lives in the moment where a guest actually has to choose a bottle. Andrew Nelson, President and Co-Founder of WarRoom Cellars, is looking at that same consumer from the brand side, acquiring and revitalizing legacy names and figuring out what people still love about them.

The conversation gets into the difference between a trend and a fad, orange wine, chilled reds, Riesling, large-format bottles, alternative packaging, value, restaurant wine lists, and the strange alchemy of taking a wine brand with real history and giving it a second act. Andrew also takes us inside WarRoom’s approach to brands like Bonny Doon Vineyard and its newly acquired Pacific Rim, while Alex talks about being the conduit between the enormous world of wine and the actual human sitting at his table.

We skip the Paso Wine Wire this episode and go straight into harvest with winemaker Anthony Yount, who takes Adam’s call with barrels being hydrated and Chardonnay arriving in the background. Anthony gives a genuinely working-winemaker review of STRAUSS, the Official Workwear Partner of Paso Robles Wine Country, including how his STRAUSS Chelsea boots have held up against long cellar days, water, concrete and his previous experience with Blundstones. He also gives us a live look at what was shaping up to be a very long 2026 harvest.

And for our Travel Paso Spotlight, we head to Studios on the Park, right across from the downtown Paso Robles City Park, with Jordan Hockett, Operations Manager & Curator, and Christy Wilkins, Marketing Coordinator. We talk about the artists working inside the space, exhibitions and events, and the nonprofit mission behind it all, including Kids ArtSmart, which Jordan says serves around 5,000 local elementary school students each year.

🍷 Guests + Links

Alex Wolfe | Les Petites Canailles

Website: https://www.lpcrestaurant.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lespetitescanailles_/

Andrew Nelson | WarRoom Cellars

Website: https://warroomcellars.com