The Winery SF Releases Its First Made-in-SF Wines

Photos by W. Blake Gray

What are our parents doing on that wine label on the right? Ewwww.

​Last year, The Winery SF opened on Treasure Island and began hosting weddings, tours, etc. But making wine takes time, so at first visitors could taste only Vie and Sol Rouge wines, which are also made by The Winery SF winemaker and part-owner Bryan Kane.

Now the Treasure Island-made product is finally ready for its closeup. I had a chance to sample the wines last weekend at the Family Winemakers show. Despite labels that belong in the window of a Fisherman's Wharf junk shop, the wine inside is surprisingly good.

But first, about those labels: ecch. Locals realize all the hippies left for Marin County or Hawaii years ago, but we're not the target audience for pandering wine names like Love Child, Flower Power, and worst of all -- this is the name for a single wine I'm about to list here -- Peace Love Harmony Freedom Community. Yeah, we want all that stuff, but we don't want to drink it.

Bryan Kane is really too nice to bitch-slap

​Moreover, I wanted to bitch-slap Kane in the middle of one of his trite sales pitches. After he told me about how Love Child captures the spirit of a generation, and something I forget about Flower Power, he gave me the same spiel twice about "Ask Alice," about how "in the '60s people experimented with ways to alter their consciousness, but some of the things they used to do it ..." my mind drifted off while he tippie-toed around the subject. Finally I asked point blank: "Is there LSD in this wine?" No, unfortunately, and in the case of Ask Alice, a characterless rosé, it might have helped.

I never got to like the spiels any better. ("You are the rock star! And it rocks. But it also celebrates all the great music that comes out of San Francisco." Does that include Night Ranger?) But I did come to enjoy some of the wines.

The Winery SF Rockstar North Coast Red Wine 2008 ($30) is a Syrah-based blend that opens with appealing gamy notes along with cherry fruit and has decent acidity. I wouldn't quite call it a star, but it could be a backup singer or percussionist.

The Winery SF Speak North Coast Red Wine 2008 ($30) is a Mourvedre-based blend with pleasant crushed red plum and earthy notes. I wish the back label would tell me what the grapes are and where they're from instead of a trite paragraph on the free-speech movement, but I would drink this.

The Winery SF Peace Love Harmony Freedom Community North Coast 2008 ($30) doesn't have any space left on the label to announce that it's an unusual blend of Zinfandel, Mourvedre, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. I've seen tens of thousands of wine names, including Bitch, Cleavage Creek, and Big Ass Red, and this is the worst yet. But the wine's decent: bright raspberry fruit with some backbone and enough tannins to give it mouth presence.

The Winery SF also makes a line of wines with simple black-and-white labels, presumably for folks like me who don't want to put something that looks like it came from a coloring book on our dinner table. They actually list the grapes used right on the front label, but in this case looking serious doesn't mean they're better; generally I found them a step down. There was one exception:

The Winery SF North Coast Petite Sirah 2008 ($24) was the best of the winery's first crop of releases in any label. It's intense, spicy, initially quite oaky in the aroma, with the teeth-blackening blackberry fruit that Petite Sirah offers along with thick tannins. It's a thrill ride and just as well that it doesn't have a hippie label on it, because back then our parents were drinking Chenin Blanc if they had wine at all; this gutsy red might make them exclaim, "These kids today!"

None of the wines are yet in distribution, but even though the official release party isn't until next month, you can already sample and buy them at The Winery SF on weekends from 1-5 p.m. or weekdays by appointment. Leave your Lil B discs at the door; let's not let them know the 21st century has begun.

The Winery SF
200 California Ave. (At Ave. C, Treasure Island)
735-8423