In beer country, room for wine

Lorraine and Mike Barber began making wine in a tiny San Francisco apartment. A decade later, the couple is attempting to bring its Zinfandel and Pinot gris to downtown Petaluma, a city known more for brewpubs than wine tasting rooms.

After successfully marketing their wine online, the Barbers decided a physical location was the next logical step, so they set up a Kickstarter campaign to fund a tasting room in Petaluma, where they live now. The tasting room would be the first of its kind to open downtown if successful.

“We’re really hoping that it’s just the beginning, and not the only local tasting room,” Lorraine Barber said. “Hopefully more wineries will want to showcase their local bottles (in their own rooms). There’s so much wine culture here and it’s not getting as much exposure as Napa and Sonoma.”

Barber Cellars, started in 2005, has humble roots.

“If you’ve never seen a bunch of people trying to move a quarter-ton of grapes into a two-story walk-up apartment in San Francisco, I’d recommend it if you want to laugh at other people’s physical pain,” Lorraine Barber said. “We sterilized the kitchen and we sterilized a friend’s legs, then we started crushing grapes. We kept everything in our tiny closet. The fumes almost drove us out of the apartment. When the barrel had to be rehydrated, we sprayed it in the bathtub.”

Since making bathtub wine, the Barbers decided to go legit. Barber Cellars now showcases three Zinfandels - the grapes are from Topolos on Sonoma Mountain - and a Pinot gris using grapes from Keller vineyards in Petaluma.

The vineyards are dry farmed, and the drought did not reduce the Barber’s annual grape deliveries.

The rewards for helping fund the Kickstarter campaign include an invite to the gala opening, T-shirts, cheese and wine pairings in the tasting rooms and even helicopter and plane rides over the vineyards piloted by Mike’s father, an award-winning, record holding aerobatic pilot.

Ingrid Alverde, director of economic development for the city, looks forward to new commerce downtown.

“I’m all for a tasting room,” she said. “Tasting rooms attract visitors, promote local wine and brings people downtown.”

Alverde added that in addition to the right land use permits, tasting rooms and wine bars have additional requirements to satisfy health and safety standards.

The Barbers plan to open their tasting room in the early summer. Lorraine Barber said they have identified a downtown location, but they are keeping it a secret for now.

“As far as renovations go, that place is pretty good. We’d just have to paint a couple walls and build a counter top,” she said.

Wine isn’t the only product the couple makes. The Barbers are also venturing into single-malt rye, and hope to start producing later this year.

“Making single-malt rye is a painful process,” said Adam Spiegel, head distiller and owner of the Sonoma County Distilling Company in Rohnert Park, which makes a rye using malted and unmalted grains. “The single-malts give a huge rye bread profile. It’s kind of a lost taste in America because we don’t really see many distilleries make it anymore.”

Mike Barber said he wants to reintroduce single malt rye to Petaluma.

“When we made it in our small batches, it was so packed with flavor I knew we had to get it out to the public,” he said. “This is the best rye on earth.”

Because distillation laws are separate from wine and beer, home-distillation, or moon-shining, is illegal. The Barbers use an out-of-town brewer and a Petaluma distiller to blend, cook and house their barrels of rye.

California law prohibits the marketing of spirits through tasting, unlike beer and wine. Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, is pushing for a relaxation of that rule, allowing craft spirit tasting at farmer’s markets and tasting rooms, as well as allowing the purchase of up to three bottles of spirits directly from the distillery.

“Would we love to give our rye out in the tasting room? Absolutely,” Barber said. “Provided the legislation goes through. Right now, we’re completely focused on wine.”

(Contact William Rohrs at william.rohrs@arguscourier.com.)