Cooking Corner by Various Authors

By Peter Rowe

Omar Khayyam didn't ask for thou, a loaf of bread and a jug of O.J.

Because wine is swooningly romantic, we expect wineries to set a certain tone. We want rolling hillsides planted in vines. Massive oak barrels. Cozy tasting rooms. A well-stocked shop. Tours.

But, as another potent saying insists, in vino veritas. And the truth about Blue Door Winery doesn't match those stereotypical images.

The three-year-old operation lacks its own vineyard, store and tasting room. Its grapes are raised and harvested by farmers throughout California. The finished product is peddled over the Internet. Marc Hashagen, a co-owner, has been known to personally deliver merlot and cabernet franc to customers, one bottle at a time.

"We're as boutique as it gets," he said.

This is a boutique winery? Seems more like a shoe-box winery. True, Blue Door plans to crush 20 tons of grapes this fall, more than 130-fold increase over 2006, its first year. By commercial vineyard standards, though, this is a drop in the chilled wine bucket. Annually, California wineries press about 3 million tons of grapes.

This tiny winery, though, represents a larger trend. In November, industry sources counted 6,101 wineries in the United States, a 2 percent increase over the previous year. Much of that increase came from mini-viniculturalists operating in all 50 states — Alaska Denali Riesling, anyone? — often far from classic wine-producing regions like the Napa and Sonoma valleys.

The mini-vini boom has followed a course similar to that charted by microbreweries in the 1980s. In both cases, amateurs dabbled in their fluid hobbies until their enthusiasms overwhelmed their refrigerators and cellars.

"We got to the point where we had more wine than we wanted to save and drink," said Sam Oriza, a downsized software project manager who lives in Fallbrook, Calif.

Oriza realized he had two choices: Find a new hobby or go pro.

In 2006, Oriza rechristened his 2-1Ú2-acre home. It's now the Orizaba Winery.

CLUELESS AND CRAZY

Talk to enough small-time winemakers, and their tales, like barrels of malbec and sangiovese poured into a stainless steel tank, blend. All of these wine lovers are tinkerers with modest surpluses of time and land. (Oriza's initial innocent thought on planting a handful of vines in his yard: "Well, this is a good idea.")

And most, sooner or later, came to the same conclusion.

Rick Buffington, whose Cougar Vineyard in Temecula, Calif., grew out of a smaller operation he and his wife, Jennifer, had in Fallbrook: "We had no idea what we were doing."

Mike Dunlap, at Escondido Sunrise Vineyards: "No, not a clue."

Blue Door's Hashagen: "Everyone says you're crazy. You've lost your marbles."

If so, this is a part-time looniness. Hashagen works full-time for a software company whose products helps supply tickets to big live events. Clients run the gamut from a California horserace track to the Malaysian Grand Prix.

But in 2006, Hashagen and a friend decided to make a small batch of wine. Needing grapes, they checked the website of the San Diego Amateur Winemaking Society and found the perfect source. If anyone could understand the terror and euphoria that bedevils rookies in this business, it was Mike and Nancy Dunlap.

Fourteen years ago, these certified public accountants bought a home on a wooded eight-acre spread in Escondido.

They planned to landscape one acre and let the rest go its green, leafy way. Then they met an amateur winemaker with a more seductive vision.

She asked to borrow the Dunlaps' land. She would festoon the property with vines, raise and harvest the grapes, make the wine and pay the Dunlaps in full bottles. Well, why not?

This is why not: "She put in the grapes," Mike Dunlap said, "and then went bankrupt and left town."

Overnight, the Dunlaps were transformed into grape farmers. The first harvest at the newly dubbed Escondido Sunrise Vineyards became rotgut, poured into too many cases of unlabeled bottles. Nine years later, though, the Dunlaps have 2,300 healthy vines on five acres, and an annual harvest party that draws dozens of devoted customers.

Hashagen's been one of those clients since 2006, when he bought 100 pounds of Escondido Sunrise merlot. The next year, he ordered a ton. This year, he hopes to score two tons from the Dunlaps and an additional 18 tons from three other grape growing appellations.

In terms of bookkeeping and phone calls, it requires as much work for the Dunlaps to sell 50 pounds of grapes as 50 tons. "But they are so appreciative," Mike said of his smaller customers. "And people like Marc, they need to know that we'll sell them the grapes."

Even now, buying several tons at a time, Hashagen is a split in an industry dominated by jeroboams. He's had some orders canceled after a larger enterprise insisted that it needed grapes previously promised to this San Diego upstart. But Hashagen's dealings with the Dunlaps have been smooth, reliable, honorable.

HELPFUL RIVALS

In a San Marcos, Calif., warehouse formerly used by Carlsbad Coastal Winery, Blue Door maintains its offices and fermentation tanks. Carlsbad Coastal made sure this warehouse had a federal permit allowing it to produce and store wine commercially, and Blue Door now uses that bond.

Blue Door started peddling its wines — merlot is its bestseller, although some prefer the cabernet franc - in January. Sales run about three to four cases a week, Hashagen estimated, spurred by tasting parties, the occasional restaurant and wine bar account, as well as the winery's 240-odd Facebook "friends."

Hashagen is also buoyed by an odd source: his rivals. "One of the things I didn't expect was how helpful everyone is, even the other wineries. We're not finding other people giving us competition. They're giving us help."

Perhaps that's because most winemakers, large or small, understand that the odds against a newcomer's success, like the finish of a fine cabernet, are long.

Sam Oriza, who has been raising grapes for 11 years, became a professional winemaker in 2006. His wines, Orizaba, sell for $12 to $16 per bottle. He loves the work, but notes that this is not a job.

At least, not if "job" means profitable labor.

"I don't think I could make half of my money back if I sell all my wine," he said. "You can't keep this low production and make any money."

Mike Dunlap, the guy who once hoped to reap the liquid benefits of someone else's toil in his Escondido vineyard, agreed: "This project makes no economic sense."

But then Omar Khayyam was a romantic, not an economist.

Peter Rowe writes about food and wine for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Contact her at peter.rowe@uniontrib.com.

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