Winery

   We live an extremely full life.   With a Wine Tasting room open 7 days a week, fourteen vineyards to manage for other customers, nine horses, five cats, one dog and three kids in their twenties…can’t say that we spend a lot of time sitting around!  Oh, and did I mention the full-time job, with travel on top of all that?  As a result, we have so many competing priorities with every day feeling like a mini-race to get everything done.

About three months ago, our family had a health scare that made us stop in our tracks and reassess our priorities.  We started to look at the things we wanted to accomplish, and found that we were often putting ourselves last to pay the bills, and meet everyone else’s needs and expections.  As a result, I have become better acquainted with the word “no.”   Being a southern women, I need to be a little more polite, so it is usually “no, thanks” or “just can’t take on one more task”, and it actually feels good!

For instance, William spends a great deal of his time working in other people’s vineyards, and making sure that it looks great, and the grapes are doing well.  However, that means that our own vineyard probably does not get as much attention as it needs, or there are whole cleared plots that are still awaiting poles, wires and plants.  This season, he put our order in first for grapes…unheard of…usually all his client orders get in first.  In addition, he takes one day a week to just work on our property, and after just a couple of months, we are amazed at how many projects have been completed, and how great the place is looking.

Another example is that we are often asked to participate in events all over the county to pour our wines.  While they bring great exposure, they always do not come with pay, but we have felt the need to cover many of these events at our own expense, sometimes back to back or splitting up to cover two events in one evening.  Well, that’s where the “no thanks” comes in handy.  We choose one big event a month, and that is the one we participate in.  Unless the event is in our wine tasting room in Old Town, we do not sign up for a lot of other outside activities.  While the outreach to more potential customers is broader, it has actually spread us too thin, and we are tired and less enthusiastic about participating.  Picking and choosing events that resonante with us (fundraiser for Meals on Wheels, wine tasting at local theatre) give us so much pleasure, and we represent our winery so much more enthusiastically.

Finally, our huge annual grape stomp has been such a success that it was going to have to move to a larger location to hold the upcoming crowds…we sold 200 tickets last year.  We had outgrown our space, and needed to move to the large Old Town State Park.  With permission granted, we started to move forward on the plans, but soon realized that a bigger space required more expenses, i.e. security, fencing, canopies, etc.  The more we worked on the project, the less enthusiastic we became…and then wondered, why are we working so hard at this?   As a result, we decided to go simple and smaller with our Grape Stomp this year…bringing it up the ranch and winery, and hosting a private party.  We realize that we may disappoint a few people, however sometimes we need to do what works for us. 

We still are “type A” people and probably still do more than the average couple, but life is becoming much more manageable..and more fun.  It’s nice to look out on our own property, and know that some of our projects are getting done and fulfilled.  Because in the end…it’s not the quantity, but the quality…don’t you think?

It was April 2008, just two years ago, that we opened the doors of our Wine Tasting Room in Old Town, San Diego.  This was not without risk…the country and California were in the middle of a raging recession, we had three kids in college, and we weren’t really as ready as we would have liked…the opportunity presented itself when we weren’t even looking!  But open we did…still remember the first five minutes…we opened the door, and a gentleman walked in and said that he wanted to buy a bottle of wine for dinner that evening.  I took his cash, turned to the register, and it wouldn’t open…it wouldn’t budge…it just kept beeping at me.  William nervously packaged the wine, whispering “he needs his change” and I replied through clinched teeth “I know…I can’t get the register to work”.   I then reached down for my purse and thankfully had the right change to provide.   That’s the memory of our first sale in the tasting room.

Since that time, we have had a lot of parties, mixers, networking groups, birthdays, bridal showers…you name it, we’ve hosted it!   Many went smooth as silk…others were a little bumpy or provided interesting challenges.  There was the evening that two networking groups showed up at the same time…we thought they were on two different nights, but they apparently were the same night.  So we juggled almost 75 people in a space for 55.  Since the plaza was under construction and the patio next store was vacant, we created sitting areas, and moved tables over for people to be able to network…it ended up being one of the better events for both groups.   We had a women’s book club hold one of their meetings and also experience of Old Town, and they sent a photo of their group in front of our tasting room to the Oprah book club…and our place was on her website for a month.   We started a grape stomp out of nothing the first year, and last year, we sold out at 2 pm, when we just opened at noon.   Participating in Halloween events, special dessert and port tastings, hosting a wine cruise on San Diego bay, we are always up for anything.   This third year brings more adventures, as we are adding a wine tour called “Two wineries and a brewery” and bringing in other San Diego wines from smaller boutique wineries, as well as local breweries.  We expect this summer to be our best, and are always thankful that so many people return again and again to our place.   Our thanks to the many who helped us be so successful…who knew that a newly opened business during a recession could grow and expand…we are very thankful!

One never knows who will be entering the Wine tasting room…can be a tourist from Europe, a couple from the midwest, a local person who hasn’t been to Old Town, SD in awhile…we are always interested in who comes to taste our wines.  One Saturday afternoon, we had a visitor who had been to our Tasting Room almost a year before, and he was back for an annual convention that he attends.  At his downtown hotel, he met a reporter from USA today, who was covering a couple of local stories in San Diego.  He mentioned that he would be going to our Wine Tasting Room later in the day, and she should really try to meet him there to check out the place and taste some San Diego wines. 

He arrived around noon, and was telling us this story, when just then, Laura the USA Today journalist walked in the door.  She was funny and delightful, tasting wines and sharing tales of some of the stories that she had been covering.  There were people coming in and out of the Tasting room, drinking and sharing…almost felt like a party!  When she was leaving, she asked if she could include us in a business articles that she was creating, mostly around small businesses and entrepreneurs.  Of course, we said yes…as long as the article was a good one..smiles!

A month later, a photographer came to the Wine Tasting Room and took about 100 photos, and two days later, we were on the front page of the Money section for USA Today.  It was amazing to see our picture on a publication that reaches 7 million viewers.  So, the old adage of never knowing who you will meet is a good one…always be prepared and open to the opportunity!

Many people enter our Wine Tasting Room and after hearing our stories and tasting our wines, loudly proclaim “you guys are living the life….wine and horses!”  William and I just smile at each other, agreeing with their comment, but knowing that it didn’t just happen in one day.  We didn’t grow up on a vineyard, nor inherit or purchase a winery, and have had to create it literally from scratch.

Our journey began with a dream…to have a horse ranch and farm in the country.  We even had the name picked out - Hacienda de las Rosas, which means “big house with the roses”.  People would ask about our ranch and where it was….and I would point to my head, and state “It’s up here right and eventually, it will be real.”  When we purchased the property in Ramona…it was a beautiful adobe home, with a Spanish courtyard and huge rose garden…the perfect “Hacienda de las Rosas.”

However, the property contained about six hundred dead apple trees, and a dilapitaded avocado grove with a few citrus trees that were old and barely producing.  So, the real work began…clearing the property, building horse facilities, and trimming back almost 250 avacado trees.  With a very limited budget, we used to tease that every time we tackled aproject, it was “one board at a time”, because that was all we could afford.  It also meant that we did a lot of the labor ourselves, so we learned to trim trees and plant and build the structures around the property. Years went by, as we raised kids, worked our full-time jobs, started breeding Peruvian Paso horses, and lived our daily life as we built the dream.

The winery started as just an idea, for at that time, William decided to plant some vines just for fun.  Then he decided to get serious and attended viticulture classes and interned with other wine makers to make wine.  There were good batches and bad batches (vinegar comes to mind!), however it was a process started that became an adventure in itself.

When we decided that it would become a business, there were so many decisions - design of the label (we were both adament about a Peruvian Paso horse on the label!), choosing the bottles, corks and capsules; purchasing the equipment (most of it used because that was all we could afford!) and jumping all the legal hoops.  While still working a full time job, William became our saleman and distributor, conducting all the sales and delivery activities with local restaurants and liquor stores.

Finally, in 2008, with three kids in college, an economy proceeding toward recession, and possible layoff for Tammy, our family opened our retail Wine Tasting Room in Old Town, San Diego.  Operating 7 days a week, and using every monetary resource that we had, as well as good wishes from friends and family, we felt that we were making a huge step…that was both scary and exciting!  Acting as the retailers, wine makers, horse breeders, shipping department, customer relations, and marketing department has been exhausting and stretched us many times.  However, it has allowed our business to grow exponentially, and given us the opportunity to meet some of the most interesting and nicest people in the world!

On any given day, we will have visitors from Europe, Canada, Mexico, Australia and from across the United States.  And we meet lots of folks right in our own backyard…it’s like throwing a small party every day and not sure who the guests will be until they arrive!

It has taken us years and a lot of work to reach this life that we now have.  However, when any visitor tells us that we “are living the life”, we often smile at one another and completely agree!