Pull a record from the crate, drop the needle, and pour something dark. That is the Zanoli way. In a reclaimed-wood lounge in Tin City, the cluster of working wineries on the south edge of Paso Robles, Jimmy and Shelly Zanoli built a tasting room around Jimmy’s grandfather’s vinyl collection and a single stubborn ambition: to make Syrah the way they make it in Cornas, the granite-soiled northern Rhone village where the grape is at its most savage and savory. They launched the label around 2014. The family, though, has been in San Luis Obispo County since the 1800s.

Italian roots, a northern Rhone heart

Jimmy Zanoli was born and raised in the city of San Luis Obispo, the latest in a family whose Italian line has been part of SLO County since the 1800s. That depth of local roots matters in a wine region full of transplants, and it grounds what is otherwise a thoroughly modern project. He and his wife Shelly launched Zanoli Wines in December 2014, a small, hands-on, husband-and-wife operation built on a clear and slightly contrarian idea of what Paso Robles Syrah could be.

The tasting room tells you who they are before you taste a thing. Shelly designed an intimate lounge of reclaimed wood, shag accents, and family photographs, and at its heart is a vintage vinyl listening area inspired by Jimmy’s grandfather’s extensive record collection. It is casual, personal, and unpretentious, a deliberate rejection of the marble-and-mood-lighting tasting-room formula. The wine gets the seriousness; the room gets the soul.

The Zanoli family has called San Luis Obispo County home since the 1800s, but the wine they make looks to a granite hillside in the northern Rhone.

Tin City and the pull of Cornas

Zanoli pours in Tin City, the gritty, creative enclave of metal-sided buildings on the south side of Paso Robles where small producers, brewers, and distillers cluster together. It is the opposite of a manicured estate, and it suits a minimal-intervention label that would rather spend its energy on what is in the glass than on landscaping. The fruit comes from west-side and Paso Robles sources, grown, as Jimmy puts it, primarily in the limestone and calcareous soils that define the region’s best ground.

Those soils are the bridge to the wine’s spiritual home. Zanoli’s lodestar is Cornas, the tiny appellation in the northern Rhone where Syrah grows on steep granite and produces some of the darkest, most structured expressions of the grape on earth. Paso is not granite, but its calcareous limestone delivers its own kind of mineral tension and concentration, and the Templeton Gap supplies the cooling marine air that drives Paso’s huge day-to-night temperature swing. Those cold nights are crucial for Syrah, locking in the acidity and peppery aromatics that keep a big, ripe Paso red from going flat and jammy.

Dark, savory Syrah and a Rhone-leaning crew

Syrah is the headline, and the Cornas reference is the tell. Expect a brooding, savory style rather than a sweet, fruit-forward one: deep, near-opaque color, black fruit shadowed by smoked meat, olive, crushed black pepper, and a wild, almost bloody edge, with firm structure underneath. Minimal intervention is the method, which means letting native character and the vintage come through rather than sanding everything smooth, so these are wines with grip, energy, and a point of view.

Around the flagship sits a Rhone-leaning, genre-curious lineup. Grenache, Mourvedre, and Cinsault give the warmer, redder, more perfumed side of the Rhone, alone or in blends, and there are whites and other reds, from Chenin Blanc and Chardonnay to Tempranillo and Graciano, that show the couple’s willingness to chase a grape they love wherever it leads. Across the board the wines favor honesty over polish, the kind of bottles that reward a drinker who wants to taste a place and a choice rather than a formula.

What to pour Zanoli with

Savory Syrah wants savory food, and the chemistry backs the instinct. A Cornas-style Syrah carries firm tannin, and tannin binds to protein and fat and softens against them, so reach for grilled lamb, a peppercorn-crusted steak, venison, or a red-oak-grilled tri-tip with a hard char. The wine’s smoked-meat and black-pepper notes practically duet with grilled and roasted meats, and the smoke off the grill amplifies the savory side of the glass. Mind the spice, though, because chile heat amplifies the perception of alcohol, so a ripe Paso Syrah will taste hotter beside a fiery dish than it does on its own.

The redder, lighter Rhone grapes open other doors. Grenache and a Grenache-led blend love herb-roasted chicken, mushroom dishes, and charcuterie, where acid cuts the richness and resets the palate, and the whites belong with seafood and bright, tangy starters. For a precise match on a specific bottle and plate, our wine pairing generator is the fast way to land one.

Visiting Zanoli

Zanoli’s tasting room is in Tin City, the walkable cluster of small wineries, breweries, and makers on the south side of Paso Robles, which makes it easy to fold into an afternoon of hopping between producers rather than a single destination drive. The draw here is the experience as much as the wine: an intimate, vinyl-spinning lounge where Jimmy and Shelly themselves are often the ones pouring, talking through the Cornas inspiration and the minimal-intervention thinking behind each bottle. It is the kind of room where you sit longer than you planned. Because hours at small Tin City rooms shift with the season and the crowds, check current hours or reserve ahead before you go, particularly if you want time with the owners. For help building out the rest of a day that mixes Tin City with the west-side hills and downtown rooms, our Paso Robles guide maps how the pieces fit together.

ZANOLI Wines: common questions