Andrew Jones has stood in just about every vineyard on the Central Coast, and that is not an exaggeration, it is his day job. As a grapevine nurseryman he plans and plants vineyards for farmers up and down California, which means he sees the diamonds in the rough, the unknown blocks and overlooked sites that hold quietly extraordinary fruit. Field Recordings is what he does with that knowledge: a personal catalog, in his words, of the people and places he values most. The Tin City tasting room is the heart of it, and it has become one of the touchstones of California minimal-intervention wine.

The nurseryman who kept the best rows

Andrew Jones spends his days as a grapevine nurseryman, planning and planting vineyards for farmers all over California. Standing in all those vineyards, he developed a keen eye for sites that were unknown or under-appreciated but held enormous untapped potential, and the growers he worked with would sometimes offer him small lots of their best fruit on the side. In 2007 he started turning that fruit into wine as a hobby project. The hobby grew into Field Recordings, which he describes as his personal catalog of the people and places he values most.

That origin explains everything about the wines. Jones has access most winemakers can only dream of, a direct line to distinctive vineyards across the Central Coast, and a relationship with the people who farm them. He makes the wines with minimal intervention, stepping back to let the site speak, and his curiosity and lack of pretense have made Field Recordings a quiet leader in the natural and low-intervention wine movement that has come to define Tin City.

Field Recordings started in 2007 as a side project for a nurseryman who kept getting offered small lots of his clients best fruit. The hobby became one of the most quietly influential labels in California.

Tin City and the natural wine movement

Field Recordings has been part of Tin City since its early days, and the two have grown up together. Over the past decade this former industrial corridor of metal buildings just south of downtown Paso Robles has become a focal point for California natural and minimal-intervention wine, a dense cluster of small-production wineries, cideries and craft producers that draws visitors and trade attention from across the country. Field Recordings helped give the district its identity as a destination for low-intervention, variety-driven California wine.

The tasting room sits at 3070 Limestone Way, Suite C, off Ramada Drive near the Highway 46 West and 101 junction. There are no estate vines at the door. Jones sources from vineyards across the Central Coast, choosing the site to fit the grape, which is the whole point of his nurseryman eye. A visit here is a tour of those finds, the unsung blocks and forgotten corners he has coaxed into the glass.

The wines: single-vineyard finds, plus a canned revolution

At its core, Field Recordings makes single-vineyard wines with a strong sense of place and personality, each a snapshot of one site captured with as little winemaking interference as possible. The range is wide and curious, reflecting whatever distinctive fruit Jones has found, so the list rewards tasting through and discovering something you did not expect.

Then there are the projects that made Field Recordings famous well beyond Paso. Wonderwall is a line of cool-climate wines, and Fiction is a beloved series of blends, but the brand best-known contribution may be helping prove that seriously good wine can come in a can. Field Recordings was an early and influential player in premium canned wine, putting genuinely well-made wine into a format that goes where a bottle and a corkscrew cannot. It is a perfect expression of the Jones philosophy: take wine seriously, take yourself lightly.

What to pour it with

Minimal-intervention, variety-driven wines like these are some of the most food-flexible bottles you can open, because they tend to keep their natural acidity and avoid heavy oak. A bright, lighter-bodied red is a dream with pizza, charcuterie and grilled vegetables, its acidity cutting through fat and salt and resetting your palate, which is exactly why Field Recordings own pizza-night bottlings exist.

For the white and cool-climate wines under Wonderwall, lean into seafood, salads and fresh, herby cooking, where high acidity bridges to bright flavors and slices through anything rich or fried. The bigger single-vineyard reds want grilled and roasted meat, the tannin softening against the fat. And the canned wines are built for exactly the places food is casual and a corkscrew is a hassle: the beach, the trail, the picnic, the campsite. Match the wine to the adventure and it rarely misses.

Field Recordings: common questions