This S.F. winery is closing — and so is a chapter in the city's history

San Francisco Chronicle​

5 days ago

A chapter in San Francisco winemaking has come to an end.
Winemaker Ed Kurtzman is closing his urban winery in the industrial neighborhood bordering Bernal Heights. Apart from wineries on Treasure Island and the Bayview's small-batch Gratta Wines, Kurtzman's was the last commercial winery in the city.
'In February I realized that the end was probably in sight and that I'd waited too long to make a final decision,' said Kurtzman, who crafts the labels August West, Sandler and Mansfield-Dunne. 'I can't afford to keep the winery running myself.'
What kept the winery at 495 Barneveld Ave. running were Kurtzman's custom-crush clients. A few years ago, 29 winemakers worked in his facility. Now it's nine. Some former clients, like Ottavino and Waits-Mast, moved their operations to Wine Country. Others shuttered their brands, a reflection of the struggling wine market.
The remaining wineries — Theopolis, 1211, Seamus, Perfusion, Grand Scheme, DeMeo, Arthur, Hersly and Fallon Place — now need new homes. Kurtzman expects many of them will find custom-crush arrangements in Wine Country or the East Bay.
Kurtzman's winery was the final vestige of a boom in San Francisco winemaking in the early and mid-aughts. Software engineer Michael Brill opened Crushpad in Dogpatch in 2004, a tech-forward juggernaut that allowed laypeople to create their own labels, paying by the barrel. It was a hit, churning out more than 5,000 different wines in its first eight years, according to Wine Spectator, and attracting a $3 million investment from industry mogul Bill Foley.
After Brill relocated the business to Wine Country in 2010 — he needed to be closer to the vineyards, he said — two Crushpad alums launched Dogpatch WineWorks, a smaller-scale version of its predecessor. Another pair of Crushpad winemakers spun off their own enterprise, opening Bluxome Street Winery in SoMa in 2010.
Meanwhile, a former financier in the Mission District, unaffiliated with Crushpad, was making the A.P. Vin label on Treat Avenue. And winemaker Bryan Harrington, who started making wine in his Bernal Heights garage before moving to a Hunters Point warehouse, was gaining a following for his wines made from esoteric European grapes.
The activity in this period was a throwback to 1890s San Francisco, when as many as 100 'wine houses' operated within the city limits, journalist Frances Dinkelspiel reports. Farmers would send their grapes to San Francisco, whose mild climate was appealing for wine storage and whose port made it an easy hub for shipments.
Kurtzman joined the party in 2007. At the time he was living in the city but working for Freeman Vineyard & Winery in Sebastopol, 'paying exorbitant amounts of money on gas and bridge tolls to drive back and forth,' he said. In partnership with Gary Franscioni of Roar Wines, he converted a building at 81 Dorman Ave. into a working winery. They later moved to Dogpatch, then the partners split up. In 2014, when Kurtzman relocated to the large space at Barneveld Avenue, he decided to expand with custom crush.
His timing was fortuitous: Dogpatch WineWorks closed soon afterward, and several of its clients moved in with Kurtzman. Many colleagues were San Francisco residents like him who bought grapes from Wine Country or areas south of the city but didn't want to commute. Some devoted themselves to their wine brands full time, but plenty were 'weekend warriors,' as Kurtzman put it, 'smart enough to realize that they should keep their day job.'
'People have come and gone as they've realized it's much harder to sell wine than it is to make wine,' he said of his custom-crush roster. 'Whether they gave it three years or 10 years, they just slowly faded away.' The other San Francisco winemakers faded away, too: A.P. Vin, Harrington, Bluxome Street and the Mission's Eristavi Winery, whose bottlings were inspired by the Republic of Georgia, all closed.
Despite the short commute, urban winemaking presents other challenges. There's the schlep to the vineyards, the extra cost of transporting glass from warehouses in Benicia or Fairfield, and the fact that most San Francisco-produced wine is then trucked to Napa or San Jose for long-term storage. Trucking costs have doubled in the 18 years Kurtzman has been making wine in San Francisco, he said.
Treasure Island still houses several wineries, but on the mainland, Kurtzman's closure leaves just winemaker Barbara Gratta, who started out in her Bayview garage before moving to a small facility nearby a few years ago. She produces about 400 cases a year and sells them from her Third Street storefront, which includes a wine bar and Italian market.
Kurtzman will continue making the August West and Sandler wines; he may retire his Mansfield-Dunne label. He'll now be looking to become a custom-crush client himself. The good news is that 'there's so much custom-crush space available, and prices seem reasonable,' he said.
He understands why many of his San Francisco compatriots have given up on making wine, especially now. 'I don't blame them,' Kurtzman said. 'For me, it's my only career, so I'm sticking with it.'