Harry Hall started Colori in 2018 after trading an old truck for a load of grapes, which sounds less like a business plan and more like the opening scene of a bad coming-of-age novel. If it were a business plan, it wasn’t a particularly smart one for Paso Robles. No Cabernet Sauvignon, no gobby “Red Blend” but a bunch of wacky Italian grape varieties that’ll buy Harry’s way into heaven. Loud wines, with lots of personality. Sangiovese, Teroldego, Nebbiolo. Carbonic fermentations, native yeast ferments, rosés with flavor, not “we’re just like Provence” wines, paler than Conan O’Brien. These are wines so good you’ll drink them up before the second plate of pasta hits the table.

That is really the whole point of Colori. Not trophy wines. Not collector bait. Wines for drinking. Wines for food. Wines with enough acidity to wake you up and enough soul to keep you interested. The Carbonic Teroldego comes on like blackberry soda spiked with pepper and violets. The Rosé of Sangiovese tastes like somebody dropped wild strawberries into a cold stream and handed you the bottle before the trout realized that they’d go well with it.

Paso Robles has always had a little outlaw energy to it, and Colori fits right into that tradition. Small production, hands stained purple, probably listening to Freddie King (not BB, not Albert) in the cellar while whole clusters bubble away in sealed tanks. It feels less like a winery built in a boardroom and more like one assembled out of instinct, curiosity, and stubborn affection for Italian grapes that most Californians still cannot pronounce correctly.