Podunk? Put a cork in it, pal

WE drove north looking for the rain because I was tired of the endless days of gray sunlight, and we found Paso Robles, shimmering in a light mist, its crisp air laced with the rich bouquet of a pinot noir.

This is wine’s newest California boomtown, luring visitors from throughout the world to bask in a generosity of nature that has produced 170 wineries. Ten years ago there were only about 35 vintners here, but a perfect combination of soil and climate have altered a small town of 29,000 souls into a wino’s paradise.

By suggesting that we drive to Paso, as they call it, my wife, the tricky Cinelli, was probably looking for ways to wean this old dog away from martinis and into a more civilized culture. “Sip a little of this and a little of that,” she says, “and forget about those nasty little drinks with olives bouncing in them like decapitated green heads.”

She has always had a colorful way of describing what repels her, and this one was a classic. But while I glory in her creative instincts I am not easily lured from the serene moments of a happy little martini taken against the horizon of a fiery sunset.

However, I am trying to appreciate good wines, and this is the place to savor the Chardonnays and the Zinfandels, the Cabernets and the Merlots, the Syrahs and the Viogniers, the Roussannes and a fussy little blend they call “the Ditch Digger.” Whimsical people these Roblens.

I ventured timidly into the world of the vintners, accustomed as they are to those so knowledgeable of wines that their cheeks are a Cabernet red and their eyes sparkle with the light of a bright Chardonnay.

I asked myself, do I sip the wine, roll it around my mouth and then spit it into a silver container like a bum spraying tobacco juice into a skid row gutter? Or do I sniff the bouquet, inspect the color and, upon sipping, throw a baby kiss to indicate my child-like delight in its amusing vintage? And how do I clean my palate between sips? And what in the hell is a palate? I don’t think we had palates in Oakland.

In Paso, we wandered the back roads up through the hilly countryside that flanks this 118-year-old town, where they have been making wine in one form or another since 1797. Oak-shrouded byways of such deep serenity that even the rain whispers led us past a mix of mansions and clapboard homes and tasting rooms of varying degrees of appeal. Fields of grapes stretch in precise rows over gentle slopes to the Santa Lucia Mountains, tomorrow’s wines beginning to leaf for the coming kiss of a new spring.

Hunt Cellars, Eberle Winery, Norman Vineyards, Adelaida Cellars and Opolo Vineyards are the ones we visited, coming away with the trunk of my car jammed with a mixture of reds and whites in enough volume to drown a Frenchman. I am going to log them into my modest but comfortable wine corner and offer them to special guests with noses and palates.

Wine was important in San Francisco when I lived there, to the extent that when one known wine snob was rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy, his good friend was said to have remarked to the surgeon, “You opened him, of course, at room temperature.” But martinis were more important and did not require special rituals to imbibe. You just drank them and sang.

Paso Robles, which I once dismissed, silly me, as Podunk, is now blessed with enough gourmet restaurants to please the most sophisticated tastes. One we chose with satisfying results was the Italian Gaetano’s, run by Marsano Gaetano himself, a big, robust man, whose greeting was large and effusively embracing. For a moment, we were his friends, his cousins, his paisanos. The food was divine, the atmosphere comfortable, his hug bone-crushing.

My favorite was the Bistro Laurent, a small, cozy room with brick walls, cool waiters and a wine list longer than a chimp’s arms, although there is probably a more appropriate metaphor to apply to an establishment of such understated elegance.

Laurent Grangien, once the chef at Fennell’s in L.A., is both chef and owner of the Laurent, a man who fled the harsher environs of Southern California to find peace and safety on a side street of a town once known for its Jeeps and pickups and now characterized by flashy sports cars that sail by on the highways like a passing breeze.

But to prove that all the elements of a small town have not completely disappeared from Paso Robles, while dining in Gaetano’s, a plump, middle-aged woman with dyed blond hair suddenly lunged from out of nowhere to wrap her arms around a startled Cinelli’s neck, introduce herself as Tookie and say God loved her. I said, “What about me?” but she was out the door by then, limiting God’s picky love to a chosen few.

Neither Gaetano’s nor the Bistro Laurent served hard liquor, so I lost myself in a deep red Cabernet as Tookie went her evangelistic way, leaving me to dream of a sea of martinis with little green heads rolling happily in their purity, calling my name.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.