Latest News
Tasting Room Closed from 12/25/2025 – 2/12/2026
After 25 years of marriage, and being open 363 days a year, we have decided to close the tasting room for seven weeks and go on a honeymoon! Two ideas kicking around are a road …
Fin Rosé, Sold Out!
We started making our style of Rosé as a salvage experiment in 2000. We had some Cabernet Sauvignon vines that were defoliated by an early frost. The grapes were quite underripe and had green vegetal …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
We have decided to follow some of our neighbor wineries and close for a month or so over the winter. Our last day open will be Christmas Eve (for those last-minute presents), and we will …
Updated FAQ Regarding Our Retirement
After much consideration, we have stopped producing new wines. We anticipate selling bottles for another five years. We are Slow Wine producers. This is where you come in. The faster we can sell our existing …
Thanksgiving Recipes
Here is a link to a PDF of our popular Thanksgiving recipes. Print it out on paper stock and cut along the dotted lines. You will have six recipes and a bookmark. Three are hors d’oeuvres, two …
Holiday Dinners and Wine Pairings, What to Do?
What wine should you serve for (insert your favorite winter feast here)? Well, if it’s a feast with multiple guests, it’s not about a single wine; it’s about which wines will suit my guests and …
Thanksgiving in Wine Country 2025
This event is 11a-6p, November 28, 29, 30, 2025. Once upon a time, in the Yakima Valley, most wineries held an open house over the weekend of Thanksgiving. Each winery created a dish and gave …
Honoring Veterans’ Day, Join our Rally
Paul will be leading a “Vets Say No” rally on Veterans’ Day in Zillah at the corner of Vintage Valley Parkway and 1st Ave (where the lone traffic light is) from 10am to noon. Please …
The Horses are Coming! The Horses are Coming!
2025 BCHW 24th Annual Winery Ride and Halloween Costume Contest, October 25th The Back Country Horsemen of Washington State are having their annual ride in the Rattlesnake Hills. Approximately 400 horses and their riders will …
No Kings 2.0 10.18.2025
Paul is hosting an event right here in Zillah on the corners of Vintage Valley Parkway and 1st Avenue from 10:30am to noon (our tasting room will be closed during that time). This will be …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
What’s it like being at the beginning of a really excellent vintage and not making wine? Well, I do cycle through the stages of grief, but this year, acceptance seems to have taken hold. I …
Tariffs Continue to be Stupid Sale
Unlike the tariffs’ flip-flop situation, which continues months later, our sale is solid and good for at least a few months or so. Since most consumer items are likely to go up in price in …
How to celebrate 25 years of marriage?
Our Wedding Anniversary Weekend is this Labor Day Weekend. For 15 years, we have celebrated with a discount based on the years our customers have been married. Some pretty big discounts were made, 61%, 47%, …
Taste Rattlesnake Hills | Sip | Savor | Celebrate | July 12-13, 2025 – Zillah, WA
Indulge in the finest wines, small bites, entertainment, education, and much more at the Gateway to Washington Wine Country in Yakima Valley. Join the wineries in the Rattlesnake Hills for a weekend of wine tasting, …
What’s the Beef?
We have one share of beef that is looking for a home—well, actually a freezer. It costs $700 for approximately 100 pounds. You can’t beat that with a stick. Have you seen the price of …
Rosé Revolution Weekend June 27-29, 2025
Rosé is not revolutionary at Paradisos del Sol Winery and Organic Vineyard. Our first wine production was a Rosé. Since our beginning in 2000, we have created dry, barrel-fermented, barrel-aged Rosés, a very traditional style …
New Release! 2017 Oyster White
Is a wine new if it’s seven years old? Is white wine any good if it’s seven years old? Our customers from the beginning might recall that on our first day of being open in …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
May days are busy, busy days! The vineyard is leafing out, which means a lot of handwork to get the canopy off to the right start! Powdery Mildew is the biggest pest issue worldwide for …
Tariffs Continue to Be Stupid Spring Sale
Unlike the tariffs’ flip-flop situation, which continues months later, our sale is solid and good for at least a few months or so. Since most consumer items are likely to go up in price in …
Spring Barrel Tasting with Older Wines
Since we didn’t have any young stuff in barrels this Spring, we opted for a library tasting. Compared to our current vintages and personal preferences, we find white wines from 2013 and 2011 are a …
What Our Beef Eats
One of our friends (thank you, Erika!) recommended an excellent book for us to read, and we both zoomed right through it: “What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health” …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
I’m busy wrapping up pruning. Some varieties sustained a lot of damage in the freeze of January 2024. By waiting until the buds swell, I have a better idea of viability—what is dead and where …
Tariffs are Stupid Spring Sale
Unlike the tariffs’ flip-flop situation, our sale is solid and good for at least a few months or so. Since most consumer items are likely to go up in price in the next few months, …
We Don’t Sell Beef
Selling beef requires an animal going through the trauma of being loaded onto a vehicle, leaving their herd, going to a strange, frightening place, and dying amongst strangers. Our cattle? They get to die here, …
Spring Barrel Tasting 2025
April 25, 26, 27 Paul, the Man in the Wild Pants, has been hosting Spring Barrel Tastings since 1985, both in Spokane and the Yakima Valley. Approximately 46 separate events. He has tried to make …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
February! In my early days working in vineyards, I was fortunate to work directly with Dr. Walter Clore. Walter was the WSU researcher who worked on grapes and asparagus, which resulted in our state becoming …
Red Wine and Chocolate!
Nine chocolate bites with wine Saturday, February 8– Monday, February 17 There has been a lovely trend in the approach to Valentine’s Day. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring one or two early …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
This is the month that many in the wine business take vacation time. Many winemakers do Ski Patrol in the winter! Others head to Equatorial areas or further south. I can attest that Nicaragua is …
Winter White Sale
Yes, yes, we know most people eschew white wines in the winter. However, we still drink plenty of white wine between autumn and spring. The Sève is great with our stir frys, which are made …
New Farm Worker
We have a new worker on trial. As I write this, I’m monitoring his progress on the patio in the bright sunshine. Sitka is a BIG black dog descended from ancestors in Bulgaria and Italy, …
Alarming Headlines
We are sure most of you have heard or read about the recent call for categorizing all alcohol as causing cancer. Most of this is based on cherry-picked research studies and does nothing to address …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
The 2024 calendar year is coming to an end. There is no end to the vineyard calendar; it’s a cycle within a cycle, a wheel within a wheel. I don’t know how to determine any …
Star of 2024?
PMS Paul’s Mocha Stuff The funds raised from our PMS wine, which accounts for a significant portion of our sales, are making a substantial impact on the lives of many women. We’ve gone from supporting …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
In the vineyard Harvest has ended, and pruning hasn’t started. What are we doing? This week, it’s mostly mowing vegetation to keep the vineyard floor from being a great habitat for voles. This cute little …
Thanksgiving Recipes
Here is a link to a PDF of our popular Thanksgiving recipes. Print it out on paper stock and cut along the dotted lines. You will have six recipes and a bookmark. Three are hors …
Holiday Dinners and Wine Pairings, What to Do?
What wine should you serve for (insert your favorite winter feast here)? Well, if it’s a feast with multiple guests, it’s not about a single wine; it’s about which wines will suit my guests and …
Thanksgiving in Wine Country 2024
This event is 11a-6p, November 29, 30, December 1. Once upon a time, in the Yakima Valley, most wineries held an open house over the weekend of Thanksgiving. Each winery created a dish and gave …
Honoring Veteran’s Day
We have veterans in our family tree; you probably do, too. Ours served in World War II, back when there was little communication between the people in the military and their families. My father and …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
Busy, busy, busy! Even without doing (much) winemaking this year, a lot of things still need doing. Yesterday, we were sending cattle home from summer camp on our organic pasture, leaving Miss Piggy and our …
Questions for You, our Loyal Customers
As many of you know, we are trying to retire. What is stopping us, you ask? First, we need to sell most of our existing bottled wine and also sell or lease the vineyard. However, …
The Horses are Coming! The Horses are Coming!
2024 BCHW 23rd Annual Winery Ride and Halloween Costume Contest, October 26th The Back Country Horsemen of Washington State are having their annual ride in the Rattlesnake Hills. Approximately 400 horses and their riders will …
The World is Swimming in Wine
99% of wine regions have a surplus. They are overproducing and shooting past the demand curve, which has been descending slightly over the past few years. That is the big problem in Washington. We were …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
Harvest Progress Now that we have actually harvested some cultivars, we are seeing how our estimated harvest stacks up to the real deal. We knew our estimates were questionable. The subzero temperatures in January damaged …
Another Tale
See Last Call for Cabernet. In the early 90s, I went toe to toe with a bunch of high-priced Napa wines. With a $12 bottle of wine. I was at Worden’s Washington Winery in Spokane. …
Last call for Cabernet!
We don’t make it often, and we don’t make much. We have two cases, 24 bottles, available at $48. No discounts. Then, we will have some available at $400 a bottle to donate to the …
PMS Donations through 8/20/24
800 Freedom Kits! Freedom Kits are washable, reusable feminine hygiene kits made primarily for young women in developing countries so they can stay in school during their period and eventually graduate. Volunteers of all ages …
What is the State of Wine in the World?
In the Wine World right now, there are more grapes and wine than consumers. It happens regularly . . . It takes years to get a vineyard into production. When times seem good, people plant; …
Wedding Anniversary Weekend (Labor Day Weekend)
How to celebrate 24 years of marriage? Our Wedding Anniversary Weekend is coming up this Labor Day Weekend. For 14 years we have celebrated with a discount based on the years our customers were married. …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
About the farm Despite the water shortage and rationing this year, the effects are quite minimal. In a year with a full supply of irrigation water, we use only half of our allotment. Vineyards only …
No more tasting fees!
As an experiment, we decided to eliminate our tasting fees. Our sales have increased! And we would rather you spend your money on our fabulous wine rather than a tasting fee. We came to the …
WAugust: 31 Days to Celebrate WA wine
31 Days. 1000+ Wineries. Search for WAugust events near you & join in the 31-day celebration of Washington Wine! Your Wine. Your Way. Your WAugust. Stay tuned and we will update this with our WAugust …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
Summertime and the living is easy! Unless you’re on the crew chopping out the competition to young vines on a hot day where you need to drink a liter/quart of water every hour. Fortunately for …
What’s your beef?
That’s a culinary question, not a confrontation! Our beef is now ready to go from the butcher’s freezer. Three animals feeding 16 families. Due to a customer moving, we have a share available, approximately 100 …
Yum, melons!
Arava! What a great result of the work of plant breeders. It’s the best this year because it was the first! Best with an ounce or two of our Angelica MRS. We are now in …
Yakima Valley named best wine region!
We did it! The votes are in, and the Yakima Valley has been named Best Wine Region in USA TODAY’s 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards! The awards were announced this morning, following a month-long public vote …
New Release! 2017 Sangiovese
We are soon releasing our 2017 Sangiovese. It has been bottled for a while, but we haven’t slapped the labels on yet. I don’t think many people would be able to distinguish it from the …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
This very hot spell has been hard on the primates, dogs, cats, and potted plants. The sheep and cattle are out grazing in the hottest part of the day, so apparently, it’s fine with them. …
PMS Donations through June 2024
Over the past 13 months, we have donated over $5800 to make almost 735 Freedom Kits at $8 each to be used locally in the Yakima Valley. We are trending towards being able to fund …
Period Poverty
Period poverty is not something most of us think about as we are sitting down to enjoy a nice glass of wine with dinner. But if your wine of choice for dessert is our PMS …
Taste Rattlesnake Hills: Sip, Savor, Celebrate
June 8 and 9, 2024 This is the first year for this brand-new event. You all know that we have food every day, albeit in tiny quantities. Over this special weekend, nine of our area’s …
Wine Sale!
Folks are trying the Sève and Oyster White and coming back for more. Try a bottle, it’s always satisfaction guaranteed. I’m drinking the Sève several times a week, which is great with our frequent stir …
Beef for Sale
Update: We still have a share of beef available. The beef is currently at the butcher shop and ready to go very soon, maybe this week. We have three head of cattle in the freezer. …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
Spring is often a crazy busy time. So much is happening in a short burst of life! Shoot thinning, planting things in the garden, weeding, mowing the lawn every 5 days, rotating cattle daily, irrigation, …
PMS Donations through May 2024
We have donated over $5000 to make almost 632 Freedom Kits at $8 each to be used locally in the Yakima Valley. We are trending towards being able to fund over 5000 kits! This money …
Spring Barrel Tasting
April 26, 27, 28 Paul, the Man in the Wild Pants, has been hosting Spring Barrel Tastings since 1985, both in Spokane and the Yakima Valley. Approximately 46 separate events. He has tried to make …
Brand New Little Free Library
After years of Barbara dreaming about having a Little Free Library, Paul finally made it happen! It still needs a few final touches, but it is full of books and ready to go. Feel free …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
In every newsletter, Paul updates what is happening in the vineyard and on our farm in general. First of all, Barbara is driving to Portland for a little vacation and then up to Seattle and …
PMS Donations through February 2024
We have donated over $3100 to make almost 400 Freedom Kits at $8 each to be used locally in the Yakima Valley. This money comes from nine months of our sales of PMS wine and …
Where’s the Beef?!
We have been selling shares of sheep and cattle over the years. Selling meat requires a USDA slaughterhouse. Animals are taken away from their herd and hauled in scary vehicles to strange and scary places …
Ava 18-year Anniversary (Founders’ Day): Chasing out the Snakes
This is happening the weekend of St. Patrick’s Day (3/15 – 3/17). Founders Day is officially on 3/20, but that is a Wednesday, and not so easy for people to come visit us. St Patrick’s …
Wine Sales Update
If you are a long-time patron, you know we are slow wine producers. We typically take 1-4 years longer to put a wine on the market than most. We feel time is an important part …
The end of Paradisos or another chapter?
Barbara and I have decided to stop wine production and start the process of retirement. We will continue to finish the last couple of vintages and continue to sell wine for another 3-5 years until …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
In every newsletter, Paul updates what is happening in the vineyard or on our farm in general. Spring is making its way past winter. Barbara will be making her way over the not snowy enough …
Red Wine and Chocolate!
Ten chocolate bites with wine Tuesday, February 13 – Monday, February 19 There has been a lovely trend in the approach to Valentine’s Day. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring one or two …
Love, Chocolate, Wine—Food of the Gods
Thinking of chocolate only as candy is too limiting (though a glass of Zort and Guajillo Chile chocolate IS a mystical experience). Chocolate candy represents less than 200 years of the thousands of years of …
Words from the Winegrower AKA Paul
After the January cold, below zero, we have had the chance to do some preliminary assessment of cold damage. The results are confounding! Typically Cabernet Sauvignon is one of our cultivars least affected by cold. …
Holiday Dinners and Wine Pairings, What to Do?
What wine should you serve for insert your favorite winter feast here? Well, if it’s a feast with multiple guests it’s not a single wine, it is which wines will suit my guests and the …
Private Label Wines
We do private label wines for both businesses and just regular folks. The two different wines that we are available right now are B’s Blend and Sangiovese. You supply the graphic and we will make …
Thanksgiving Recipes
Here is a link to a PDF of our popular Thanksgiving recipes. Print it out on paper stock and cut along the dotted lines. You will have six recipes and a bookmark. Three are hors …
First Winery to Commit to 300 Gram Bottle
By Press Release November 16, 2023 Today a small winery in Zillah Washington was the first winery in the USA to commit to the new 300 gram bottle from Verallia. Paradisos del Sol Winery and …
Thanksgiving in Wine Country
Once upon a time in the Yakima Valley, the majority of wineries had an open house over the weekend of Thanksgiving. Each winery would create a dish and give out recipe cards. For many years …
The Horses are Coming! The Horses are Coming!
2023 BCHW 22nd Annual Winery Ride and Halloween Costume Contest, October 28th That is, the Back Country Horsemen of Washington State are having their annual ride in the Rattlesnake Hills. There will be approximately 600 …
We have wrapped our 11th vintage from our Zero-Pesticide Vineyard
We’ve wrapped up the harvest in the vineyard for this vintage. My first vintage on the crush pad was 1983, 41 harvests ago! Every vintage has been different, some radically so. This one was fairly …
PMS Donations through September 2023
We just donated $1400 to make 175 Freedom Kits at $8 each to be used locally in the Yakima Valley. This money comes from four months of our sales of PMS wine and is funded …
New Release of Rosé Paradiso
We have just released a new vintage of our Rosé Paradiso! It is the 2020 vintage. Are we the slowest Rosé producers? At the least, we are in the 1% that is s l o …
PMS Donation Update as of 8/31/23
We have been selling our Paul’s Mocha Stuff (PMS) since the beginning of June. We chose to have this wine be a “choose your own price” wine. Minimum $14, maximum “sky’s the limit.” Anything over …
Small-Batch Wine Processing
What do you do with that one row of grapes that you want to process but not through the usual methods of a de-stemmer, crusher, and press? Do it all by hand! Like we do …
How Do You Make Rosé?
Several ways! One way, crush red-skinned grapes, let them soak (macerate) for a while for some of the skin pigments to dissolve into the clear juice, then press the grapes to get pink juice to …
New Wine Releases
August has been a month with a lot of releases of new wine and new vintages. Paul’s Mocha Stuff, PMS First, we came out with Paul’s Mocha Stuff, PMS, a wine devoted to raising funds …
Grape Picking and Stomping
Harvest is starting up for the 2023 vintage. We will likely harvest Temprañillo in the next few days. On Monday, September 4, we will be picking our Muscat Blanc and Orange Muscat. This is a …
Wedding Anniversary Weekend (Labor Day Weekend)
In 2010 as our tenth anniversary approached, Barbara suggested a Wedding Anniversary Weekend Special, perhaps a 10% discount to customers. My question was, in addition to the 10% returning customer, 10% military, 10% passport discount, …
Xarel•lo Grape
First off, how to pronounce it? In Catalan they say shah-RELL-lo; in Castilian, hah-RELL-lo; in English, zah-RELL-oh. So, you can choose the one that is easiest for you. We usually say shah-RELL-lo. Xarel•lo has been …
How to Sample Grapes
As the ripening period begins, veraison and sampling of the grapes begin. The challenge is getting a valid sample. Pick 100 berries from 50 vines without looking. If you look you instinctively grab riper berries. …
Veraison: Why People Get Excited
Veraison is a fancy French word that says the ripening process has begun. The cultivars with purple pigments start to develop color. The unpigmented (green) varieties start to soften and become less green. As the …
New Wine Release: Angelica MRS
We decided to bottle our new non-vintage Angelica MRS in a regular-size wine bottle rather than the half-size bottles we have used in the past. We also added a bit of Xarel·lo, which is a …
How Many Grapes Does it Take to Make a Glass of Wine?
You would think this would be an easy calculation. What makes it difficult is that every variety of grapes has different cluster sizes. And the actual grape size is different across varieties. And the size …
Free Wine Delivery vs Free-Wine Delivery
This is for all the grammar nerds out there! Free Wine Delivery: We deliver the wine you purchase for free. Free-Wine Delivery: The wine is free! And also illegal, we aren’t allowed to give it …
Ethical Beef For Sale
There is a lot of conversation about food ethics. I am all in favor of the conversations! I have siblings who have chosen to be vegetarian largely because they don’t want to participate in the …
Cork Taint aka TCA
TCA is an acronym for the chemical compound 2,4,6-trichloroanisole also known as Cork Taint. It is a molecule that humans can detect in parts per billion and we don’t like it. Some postulate it is …