Winery Spotlight: Ulloa Cellars is The Paso Robles Winery That Will Stay With You Forever
You know the feeling at the end of a wine country weekend when the wineries start blending together? Not in a bad way, exactly. The wine was good, the views were beautiful, and you had a great time. But when someone asks you Monday morning, "So, what was your favorite," you pause. Because honestly, a few of them felt... familiar. The charming tasting room with the former tech guy who left his startup to "follow his passion." The oil exec who planted vines on his second property and makes a genuinely lovely Cabernet. These are fine stories, and the wine is often great. But the story doesn't lodge itself in your memory.
Then there are the places where that doesn't happen. The places where, two years later, you can still feel exactly what it was like to be there.
Ulloa Cellars is one of those places.
We've been taking guests on Paso Robles wine tours for years, and we don't throw around "you have to go here" lightly. But Nancy Ulloa is doing something genuinely unlike anyone else in this wine region, and the wine industry is going to need more people exactly like her to survive what's coming.
Wine consumption is declining. Tasting room visitors across California dropped 14% in 2024 alone. The industry needs to pull new audiences in, people who aren't already converted, people who want more than a pour and a view. It needs connectors, educators, and personalities who make wine feel alive. Nancy Ulloa is all three.
Who Is Nancy Ulloa?
Nancy immigrated from Guadalajara, Mexico to California at age twelve, barely speaking English. Her father moved the family to Salinas chasing the American dream, and Nancy chased it right alongside him. She graduated from San Jose State with a sociology degree, concentration in community change, minor in philosophy. She worked in fine dining throughout college, fell in love with the relationship between food and wine, and eventually found her way to enology.
In 2017, she arrived in Paso Robles with a job at Thomas Hill Organics, where restaurateur Debbie Thomas took her under her wing. She learned. She worked. And in 2019, she founded Ulloa Cellars, launching her first wine, a Grüner Veltliner, from the back of her Chevy Cruze, personally delivering those first 50 cases herself.
That's not a tech pivot story. That's a real one.
She's described herself as a "wine witch," and in 2025, Wine Enthusiast named her to their prestigious Future 40 Tastemakers list, one of only nine Californians honored across all beverage categories, and one of three from Paso Robles. The recognition is well deserved, but honestly, you don't need Wine Enthusiast to tell you she's special. You figure that out in the first ten minutes of a tasting.
The Experience: Part Masterclass, Part Energy Work, Part Therapy (If You Know, You Know)
We're going to start here because this is what makes Ulloa Cellars impossible to put in a box.
Walking into Nancy's tasting room, you immediately notice it doesn't feel like a standard Paso wine stop. There's an affirmation board. There are oracle decks for anyone who wants to go deeper. Each wine on the table is accompanied by a crystal, and before the tasting ends, that crystal is yours to keep.
Before anyone rolls their eyes, here's what you need to know: Nancy will provide the receipts.
She's a scientist at heart. Every claim she makes about crystals, energy, and the metaphysical is backed by studies she's actually read. She brings her iPad. She shows you the research. She named her barrels after goddesses from different cultures, Coatlicue from the Aztec tradition, Oshun from West African mythology, Demeter from the Greeks, and she places crystal strands on top of them during aging to, as she puts it, make sure her "babies" feel protected and loved. She pulls oracle cards at harvest. Last year at her Picpoul Blanc vineyard she drew Green Tara, a female Buddha symbolizing compassion and protection from obstacles. It reminded her to slow down and take it all in.
This is not the tasting experience where someone quietly pours your wine and describes the terroir while you nod politely. Nancy puts on a show. It's a masterclass in obscure white wines, a crash course in the metaphysics of fermentation, a conversation about intention and energy, and somewhere in there, if you're open to it, something quietly shifts. More than a few guests have called it unexpectedly therapeutic. If you know, you know.
Every wine she makes has an affirmation, written in Spanish, on the back of the bottle. The affirmations are matched specifically to the energy of each wine and its crystal pairing. This isn't branding. It's philosophy. Her personal mantra, the one that carried her through an abusive relationship she found the courage to leave, through immigrating as a child, through building a winery from scratch as a Latina woman in a very white industry, is "El Universo Conspira a Mi Favor." The universe conspires in my favor.
You feel that in the room.
The Wines: Obscure, Intentional, and Genuinely Excellent
Nancy found her calling through a glass of Picpoul Blanc, a bright, crisp white grape from the Languedoc region of southern France. It's been a mainstay of French coastal cuisine for centuries, prized for its high acidity and mineral character. She hunted for the grapes for years, and when she finally secured them, she made her own. It's everything she worked toward, and it tastes like it.
We worked through the lineup and here's what stood out:
Vermentino came next, a variety originally from Sardinia and the Ligurian coast of Italy, known for its aromatic intensity and saline finish. Nancy's version had this stunning sour Skittle brightness to it, almost playful in its acidity. It's the kind of wine that makes you sit up straighter.
From there we moved to her Sémillon, a grape with deep roots in Bordeaux and the Hunter Valley of Australia. Sémillon is one of those unsung whites that serious wine people quietly obsess over. Nancy's is clean and refreshing, with a waxy, lanolin texture and lovely citrus length.
The Grüner Veltliner was the group's overall favorite, and honestly, we think the affirmation on the bottle helped seal it. Grüner is Austria's signature grape, producing wines that range from light and peppery to full-bodied and complex. Nancy's version hits in the middle of that spectrum beautifully. The affirmation? "The More Fun I Have, The More I Manifest." The table laughed, agreed, and several bottles were set aside.
We thought the Gewurztraminer would close things out. It didn't. Nancy kept pouring. Gewurztraminer is one of the most aromatic white varieties in the world, originating from the Alto Adige region of northern Italy, with deep expression in Alsace, France. It smells like lychee and rose petals and tastes like a very good decision. More than a few bottles of this one went home with our group.
There is no Chardonnay. This is a feature, not an oversight.
Who This Is For
Honestly? Anyone who wants something they've never done before on a wine country trip.
If crystals and affirmations sit directly against your beliefs, this tasting might not be for you, and Nancy would be the first to tell you that. But for anyone open to exploring that world even a little, this experience will be one of the most memorable things you do in Paso Robles.
Groups of women especially, whether it's a bachelorette weekend, a birthday trip, or just a long overdue girls' getaway. Our bachelorette wine tour packages run through Paso regularly, and when we include Ulloa Cellars, the reaction is unanimous. People cry. People laugh. People buy too much wine. It's that kind of place.
For couples on a romantic getaway, Ulloa Cellars is the stop that opens the conversation up. Something about the energy in that room, the affirmations, the crystals, the wine, the way Nancy talks about intention and love, tends to make people want to connect with each other. We've seen it happen over and over.
Why Nancy Matters for the Future of Wine
The wine industry is at a real crossroads right now. Younger drinkers are consuming less, and the old playbook of "beautiful estate, elegant pour, subtle story about terroir" isn't pulling the same crowd it once did. What people are craving is authenticity. Connection. An experience that does something to them.
Nancy built a winery entirely around that. She's the sole employee at Ulloa Cellars, handling everything from production to admin to marketing to pouring in the tasting room. She represents two communities that have historically been underrepresented in American wine: women, and Latinos. She walked into Paso Robles in 2017 feeling like she didn't see anyone who looked like her, and instead of waiting for that to change, she became the change.
She's now a Wine Enthusiast Future 40 Tastemaker, a frequent subject of national wine press, and something of a spiritual north star for a new kind of wine experience that Paso Robles is increasingly becoming known for.
The wine industry will survive this strange period of declining consumption. But it's going to take more people like Nancy Ulloa to do it.
Plan Your Visit
Ulloa Cellars is located at 2915 Union Road, Unit C in Paso Robles. The tasting room is open Friday through Sunday, 11am to 5pm. Reservations are strongly encouraged. Reach out directly at nancy@ulloacellars.com or visit ulloacellars.com.
If you want us to include Ulloa Cellars as a stop on your Paso Robles wine tour, we'd love to make that happen. Our private wine tours are fully customized to your group, and we know this region inside and out. Check out our bachelorette tour options, our romantic getaway packages, or get in touch and let's build your perfect day.
Some wineries you visit, you enjoy. Some wineries you visit, you remember forever.
Ulloa Cellars is the second kind.
Looking for more hidden gems in wine country? Check out our full guide to Paso Robles wine tours and explore sustainable wineries in the region for more producers doing something genuinely different.