September is ‘California Wine Month’ and the wineries, locals and visitors are ready to celebrate. Wine making is billed as one of our “signature” industries by the Wine Institute of California, defining a significant facet of our California culture and lifestyle. Vintners and growers will celebrate the month with special events and tastings.
The Temecula Valley Winegrowers Association currently lists 35 member wineries with two or three expected to open before 2015. The area encourages agriculture and preservation of the rural lifestyle and wine making atmosphere.
According to Peggy Evans, the association’s Executive Director, “the wine business continues to do extremely well and appears to have ridden out the “recession” relatively unscathed. The wineries here in the valley seem to have almost benefitted, due to our geographical location and being so fortunate as to have a huge population so close to our little wine country. Based upon some studies we’ve collaborated on with the Temecula Valley CVB, we can confidently report that we see over 1.7M visitors a year, employ over 1000 people in our wineries and generate tax revenue on over $75M in sales”
Wine month celebrations include a special tasting event on September 14th which allows visitors to taste from all 35 wineries in one location at the Callaway Vineyard and Winery. For a complete list of events you can visit their website events page at: www.temeculawines.org/events
A very special winery that has been in the Temecula Valley since 1998 is Wilson Creek, owned and operated by Gerry and Rosie Wilson. They currently have 9 family members working in their business; Rosie proudly says “there is always a Wilson here to greet people”. She reminisces about how their friends reacted to their purchase of their first 20 acres, they said “it’s too far out”, and though she didn’t actually hear these words she knows it was said “what have they done?”
When asked about all the new wineries that have come in and the competition Rosie says “we don’t look at it that way. We are all a big family that’s growing and we help each other.” The Wilsons intended to have a “little family winery” with an audacious goal of producing 5000 cases; according to Rosie they now do “way more than that”. They will have wine month specials in the tasting room and a Champaign lunch special at the Creekside Grille.
A more recent addition to Temecula’s Wine Country is the Robert Renzoni Vineyards and Winery, also a family business. Regarding local industry Fred Renzoni says “We are just thrilled with the fabulous growth we have witnessed in Temecula Valley wine country since we opened our doors in 2008 and we are looking forward to our continued growth when we complete construction of our 10,000 square foot Tuscan Villa tasting facility.”
Growth seems to be the key word regarding our local winery business; growth in the number of wineries, number of acres planted, revenues, employees, and the size of the facilities. If you have not visited Temecula’s wine country lately, you will be very surprised at all the new additions.