The joke at Cloak & Dagger Wines is that everything is a secret, and the wines are handcrafted at an undisclosed location by people who would rather not say too much. The reality, once you are inside the tasting lounge in downtown Paso Robles, is one of the more genuinely fun rooms in town: a tiny historic building on the edge of City Park, a wall of wines named after the Freemasons and the Trilateral Commission, and a winemaker who is very serious about the liquid even while the branding winks at you.

A winery built on a wink

Cloak & Dagger Wines runs on a single, committed idea: make exceptional wine in extremely limited quantities, and wrap the whole thing in the language of secrets and shadow governments. The bottlings carry names lifted straight from the conspiracy canon, the Illuminati, the Deep State, Area 51, the Skull and Bones Society, and the tastings are billed with a straight face as minimum security. It is a theme, and it is a good one, but it never gets in the way of the wine.

The wines are made by Ray Schofield, who handcrafts them in small lots at what the brand only ever calls The Undisclosed Location. That scarcity is the point. These are not wines made by the truckload, they are made a few barrels at a time, which is why a visit feels less like a stop on a tasting trail and more like being let in on something. The playfulness is the hook. The craft is the reason people come back.

The labels nod to Area 51 and the Skull and Bones Society, but the only real conspiracy here is how much wine they pack into such a small, secret room.

Two rooms, one downtown, one in Tin City

The original Cloak & Dagger tasting lounge sits in a small historic building in downtown Paso Robles, the old Municipal Bath House, looking out over City Park, the leafy square at the center of town. It is steps from the restaurants and other tasting rooms of the downtown wine district, which makes it an easy and atmospheric stop on a walking afternoon around the park.

The brand has since added a second tasting room and working winery in the Tin City Annex, the newer extension of the Tin City district just south of downtown, where many of Paso most characterful small producers make and pour their wine. Between the two, you can taste Cloak & Dagger either in the polished, historic heart of town or in the raw, roll-up-door energy of Tin City, depending on the day and the mood.

The wines: small lots, big personality

Cloak & Dagger leans into bold, characterful wines that match the swagger of the labels. Production is small and the list is built around limited bottlings rather than a single flagship grape, so the lineup rewards curiosity and changes as lots sell through. The naming is theatrical, but the winemaking under Ray Schofield is precise, aimed at wines with real concentration and structure.

Because quantities are tiny, the smart approach is to taste through whatever is currently open and buy what you love when you find it, because it may not be there next visit. That is part of the fun of a secret society. Membership, in the form of the wine club, is the surest way to keep a line on the wines that disappear fastest.

What to pour it with

Bold, structured reds like these want food with fat and char to meet them. Tannin binds to protein and fat, so a ribeye, lamb chops or a burger off the grill makes a firm red taste rounder and softer, while the wine cuts the richness of the meat and leaves your palate ready for the next bite. A peppercorn crust or a hit of smoke from the grill plays straight into the savory side of the wine.

Hard aged cheeses, cured meats and a good charcuterie board are the easy, low-effort match for a tasting-room visit, since salt rounds out tannin and lifts the fruit in the glass. Steer the biggest, most tannic reds away from delicate fish, where there is no fat or protein for the tannin to grab and the wine can turn bitter and metallic.

Cloak & Dagger Wines: common questions