Team C&J
This Winery Is Permanently Closed.
Winery Rating
Located at:
1401 CA-46, Paso Robles, CA 93446
Wine Club Rating
Price Range For Tasting
A trip to the J. Dusi tasting room offers exceptional views of Paso Robles, beautiful pops of bold blue color both inside and outside the main tasting area, and is stocked with fun merchandise and snacks that will appeal to visitors as they taste through the selections.
Janelle Dusi, the founder of J. Dusi Wines, has a fascinating story. The Dusi family history in Paso Robles reaches back all the way to 1925 when Janelle’s great-grandparents bought a large plot of land in what was then a small, rural community right smack in the middle of California’s Central Coast. The Dusi family came to Paso Robles from Northern Italy, but rather than plant their native Italian grapes on their property, they opted for Zinfandel, which had a prolific presence at the time.
The Dusi’s weren’t just selling their grapes to anyone. Buyers of their Zinfandel included notable wineries like Turley and Ridge. And yet, despite their success as growers, they didn’t venture into winemaking. For Janelle’s parents and grandparents, they were farmers through and through.
Enter Janelle, who had different ideas. Janelle was integrated into the family business at a young age. At 13 years old, she was already trying her hand at winemaking, under her grandfather’s tutelage, of course.
When she was old enough, she traveled around California to learn from winemakers who had already honed their craft and even made a trip to Australia to work harvests there. At 25, when she returned home, she approached her grower-father about allowing her to work with some of the family grapes with the idea that they could extend the Dusi brand to include winemaking.
While her father wasn’t immediately keen on the idea, in fact, he thought it was pretty risky, ultimately, he relented. By 2013, Janelle had grown her idea from a few experimental barrels to opening a tasting room in 2013, having eight vineyards planted to 11 grape varieties and churning out 10,000 cases of wine a year.
2022 Pinot Grigio
$20/$16 Club/$15 Dual Club
$144 Case/$115 Case Club
For the price, this is a great Pinot Grigio. The palate is filled with bright lemon and lime citrus, and some placenta floral notes. This is an acidic wine that’s balanced and would be great for summer sipping. Nice acidity.
2020 Zinfandel
Dante Dusi Vineyard
$48/$38.40 Club/$36 Dual Club
Our first Zinfandel of the tasting, and we were excited to try it because Dusi is known for its Zins. The vines are dry-farmed and were planted in 1945.
On paper, this is an interesting wine, but when we tried it, the palate didn’t quite fit into what we would expect from a Paso Robles Zinfandel. Lots of pepper, lavender, bold dark fruit, and concentrated raisin. The raisin quality gave the wine a sweet aftertaste, which was a little odd for a Zin. The finish is on the shorter side and has way too much alcohol for our tastes.
2020 Paper Street Zin
$68
This wine was an add-on to the tasting, and it had more of a classic Zinfandel profile. In the glass, the wine was unfiltered and cloudy. The palate was ripe with dark fruit, mostly plum, black pepper, and tobacco. A decent wine and more in line with what we expect from a Zin.
2019 Fiorento
50% Zinfandel, 28% Petite Sirah, 22% Carignane
$48/$38.40 Club/$36 Dual Club
What we found interesting about this wine, despite being blended with 28% Petite Sirah and 22% Carignane, is that it had almost the identical profile as the 2020 Dante Dusi Vineyard
Zinfandel. The wine had less lavender but the same sweet aftertaste with a short, alcohol-heavy finish. This isn’t our style of wine.
2019 Escandalosa
61% Zinfandel, 39% Mourvédre
$48/$38.40 Club/$36 Dual Club
This was our favorite Zinfandel of the lot. If you like a classic Paso Robles Zinfandel, we think you will find that this is the best J. Dusi wine on the tasting menu. The palate has dark fruits, black cherry, a bit of almond, and a hint of spice. The finish is still short, and it’s still showing that odd sweetness, but it doesn’t overpower the palate.
2019 Narrator
Paper Street Vineyard
46% Mourvédre, 31% Grenache, 23% Syrah
$68/$51 Dual Club
The alcohol hit hard on this GSM blend. Bright, vibrant red fruit, red berries, and some minerality. The finish is longer than the previous wines, but it doesn’t linger. A decent GSM, but not great. And that same sweet finish was present in this wine, too. It’s a little strange that that sweet characteristic makes an appearance in all of the J. Dusi wines.
Dusi’s Wine Club is okay, but it doesn’t allow the swapping of wines. Basically, you get what they send you. Members can select between tiers of four, six, and twelve bottles delivered twice per year.
Membership is free, and the benefits include:
J Dusi Wines has a beautiful winery and tasting room. Overall, the staff that we interacted with was very nice, helpful, and knowledgeable about the wines being poured. While the wines were good, there was nothing really killer here. Despite being famous for their Zinfandels, these wines didn’t blow our minds. In fact, some were odd-tasting. And that’s not to say that the wines weren’t well made. They were; everything was just kind of off for our palates.
We think where we hit a roadblock with J. Dusi Wines is that the alcohol is just off the charts, and this overwhelms the wines. Consider this: 15.4 is the lowest alcohol level on the reds. So, grapes must have had high brix at crush to get to that alcohol level, and even so, all of them had a sweet finish.
Having said that, this style of wine works for a lot of people. And on our visit, we observed a lot of happy tasters. For us, the winery is a 4, the club is a 3, and the wines are a 3.
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