Winemaking Returns to San Francisco

(PotreroView) - San Franciscans need not own a vineyard in Calistoga or Napa to become a winemaker. Dogpatch WineWorks (DWW), located on Third Street, offers an opportunity for individuals, friends, and colleagues to taste wine, tour an urban winery, or even make a barrel or two, in keeping with one of the City’s longest-standing craft traditions.

“I get grapes from as far north as Mendocino in Anderson Valley, and as far south as Santa Barbara, from San Lucia Highlands. Napa and Sonoma are only an hour away. That puts us in the middle of all the great grape growing regions throughout California,” shared David Gifford, who co-owns DWW with Kevin Doucet. “When people walk in off the street they think it’s pretty awesome when they see the equipment and realize we’re the real deal,” he said.

California winemaking was introduced by Father Junipero Serra as part of the system of missions he developed starting in the late 1700s. San Francisco’s original Spanish settlement, Mission Dolores, skipped planting a vineyard due to the area’s cold, damp climate. But by the early-1900s, the City hosted a thriving wine industry of makers and cellars. The California Wine Association lost four million cases of wine in the 1906 earthquake; the liquid in surviving bottles was used to fight the devastating fire that followed.

Prohibition decimated the country’s winemaking industry. In California, the number of wineries dropped from 700 to 100. When the state’s reputation for world-class wines started to emerge in the 1980s, the Bay Area’s winemaking epicenter had shifted north and south, creating the powerhouse wine-producing region that surrounds the City. Today, San Francisco’s cool climate has become a draw for urban wineries, including the Bluxome Street Winery, Vui Winery and Dogpatch WineWorks, which often share expertise and equipment as part of the larger regional winemaking community that encompasses the expansive East Bay Winemakers Association.

DWW melds old-world values with modern equipment to offer expert and novice vintners the ability to make wine in the middle of the world’s technology capital. Travelers from around the world — including Japan and Finland, and, closer to home, New York and Palo Alto — blend alongside local boutique winemakers at DWW’s 15,000 square feet facility.