BOB TILLMAN
ALTA COLINA WINERY
Winemaker
High hill is where the magic happens Tillman living his dream after retiring from high-tech industry The vineyard is perched high on the hill above the new tasting room on Adelaida Road.
By Brian Williams FOR VINO
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Bob Tillman has been making wine from estate-grown fruit at Alta Colina since 2007.
14
Spring/Summer 2015
ob Tillman spent the majority of his adult life as an engineer for Hewlett-Packard and was pretty good at it, but he longed to engineer something else — world-class wine. Tillman, 67, is tall, and wears glasses. His neatly trimmed black head of hair is graying around the edges. It’s easy to picture him working in the high-tech industry, which is what he did for 35 years, 25 of those with Hewlett-Packard. “When I finally retired from that, I’d had kind of a lifelong desire to do winemaking,” Tillman said. “I knew, I was not going to be a good guy with this retirement thing. I knew, I needed hobbies to keep me busy. So, as soon as I retired we started looking.” Initially, Bob and his wife Lynn, who lived on the Central Coast, scouted land in Washington state, but eventually found the perfect patch of earth closer to home. The dream became reality in 2003 when they bought 131 acres, basically an entire hill, off Adelaida Road in the burgeoning Paso Robles AVA and Alta Colina Vineyard and Winery was born. Alta colina is Spanish for high hill, a perfect description for the vineyard. The vineyard followed in the spring of 2005, when 31 acres were planted with eight Rhone varietals — mostly Syrah — on the top of the hill that sits at 1,750 feet in elevation. The first area of Petite Sirah was named Ann’s Block, in honor of Lynn’s mother Ann Walsh. In 2007, the vineyard produced enough for Tillman, who had been making wine as a hobby in his garage for years, to get his first sips. Alta Colina is planted to four Rhone red varietals — Grenache, Syrah, Mourveder and Petite Sirah
Published by the Paso Robles Press
Central Coast Edition VINO