Today we’d like to introduce you to Linda McWilliams.
Linda, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
In 2007, my husband, Mike, an Industrial Psychologist/Ergonomist, and I, a middle school speech pathologist, we’re looking into opening a Champagne Bar in the downtown area as a fun, retirement occupation. While lease deals on properties kept falling through, the market plunged. Not a good time to sell great bubbly! Next plan was to buy a wine bar to learn the business to go into for retirement.
While researching on the web, Mike found a listing for “Urban winery for sale” in San Diego. After laughing for a couple of weeks about the possibility of us actually buying a winery, we decided that we should at least take a look and find out what an urban winery was. We made an appointment to see San Pasqual Winery, located in a 1400 square foot warehouse space on a frontage road near Highway 5, in the “industrial area” of Pacific Beach. In the warehouse complex, the office space was the tasting room and behind the roll-up door were wine barrels, tanks and all the equipment needed for wine making. They bought grapes from San Diego County and Baja, had them brought to this location and the wine was made on the spot.
Mike and I thought this was a very cool operation but perhaps out of our league as we were experienced wine drinkers, not even hobby winemakers. The end result, we bought the business. I ended up spending nights and weekends (after the school – day job) taking wine production and chemistry classes and then was admitted to the UC Davis Winemaker Certificate Program. Our first vintage was 2009 which turned out to have some award winners including our now famous passionfruit wine. We were lucky to have made some great winemaker friends who help us source grapes and were always available to give advice and moral support!
Seeing that we had little to no foot traffic at the winery, we opened our first off-site tasting room in the Village of La Mesa in December 2009. We were strongly encouraged by the City Mayor and it was in our town, so done! We started with a small but amazing staff, most still with us, and began to grow. In 2013, we moved our winery operations to a near 5000 square foot warehouse in La Mesa Industrial Area. It was amazing how fast we filled that space!
While taking regular walks through Seaport Village, we noticed an empty little spot with a beautiful view of the marina. This spot continued to be empty so Mike called to see if it was available. Happily, it was, so lease negotiation and plans for build-out began. We opened our cozy tasting room with a great outdoor deck space in the summer of 2014. This was also a good time for me to step back from the speech therapy job and concentrate full time on winemaking!
So, surprised that we needed still more production space but lucky again to find another 5000 square foot warehouse space in La Mesa’s Industrial Area just down from our winery location! Mike worked to build out that space while our crush crew was busy at work with the 2015 harvest. All of our staff rotate through winery operations to see and experience the process of winemaking to better share information with our guests. We opened La Mesa Wine Works in the fall of 2016 and included another local winery, Wyatt Oaks, in both the tasting room and the production space.
Mike and I have also been active in the San Diego County Vintners Association since 2008 when we were going through the steps of purchasing the winery. In 2012, I was elected to a two-year term at the position of Vice President and Chair of the Education Committee. The next elections placed me in the role of President of that organization for two, two-year terms. It was an incredible time as the growth of the wine industry in San Diego County exploded from about 15 wineries to 115 over those years!
The growth our business, the amazing people we work with (our staff as well as other wine industry members), the awards we have won locally, state-wide, nationally and internationally and getting to know many of our customers as friends have been life-enhancing experiences! It’s been hard, hands-on work, but in the end, we have a great time and end up with wine! Not too bad…
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Our first major hurdle was learning the winemaking process. The many chemistry classes and learning so many news things made my brain hurt. Keeping what’s left of my mind on track, for both the winemaking and serving my wonderful middle school students with communication disorders, became an increasing struggle. Although missing the students, it was clear that it was not a path to success or maintaining good mental health to continue with both jobs. My early retirement was a blessing at the end which allowed me to focus fully on the winery and in the leadership of the San Diego County Vintners Association.
We have been pretty lucky throughout this new path until our winery building was recently purchased by investors in the pot industry since La Mesa’s passage of legalizing pot production and dispensaries in our Industrial Area. We will need to look for a new winery production location much sooner than we had anticipated but we know something will work out.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with San Pasqual Winery – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
San Pasqual Winery is owned by myself and my husband, Mike. He really has a good business head. I, on the other hand, am not so great with that but really enjoy the wine production part. We specialize in producing great wines using grapes from San Diego County and other premier vineyards around the state. We really do bring in the grapes and produce all of our wine in La Mesa. Some have a difficult time believing that. As an Urban Winery, we don’t have vineyards of our own but work with local vineyards. Yes, there really are a number of wonderful vineyards in our county and more being planted. We have amazing conditions here in our county for growing grapes.
We recently were awarded a Double Gold for our 2015 Cabernet Franc at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition. We were among several other local wineries to wine that coveted award although we were the only one to win with grapes from a local San Diego County vineyard.
Besides our delicious red and white wines, we are known for our Passionfruit wines, the Summervine Habanero in particular. This is a super fun wine we make from passionfruit, raspberry, hibiscus tea and then add crushed habanero peppers to ferment together. It’s a little sweet with a little heat and just about everyone loves it!
I think our diversity of wines we make an offer to make us unique.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
We are looking for the next wine production space where we can also have a tasting room. As I mentioned earlier, this is happening way earlier than we expected. Depending on the location, we will have some big changes in our day to day operations, but change can be exciting.
Pricing:
- San Pasqual Winery 2017 San Diego County Chardonnay $25
- San Pasqual Winery 2015 San Pasqual Valley Syrah $30
- San Pasqual Winery Summervine Habanero Passionfruit Wine $25
Contact Info:
- Address: Seaport Village Tasting Room – between Buster’s Longboard and Sally’s Fish House (Hyatt)
La Mesa Village Tasting Room – 8364 La Mesa Blvd. La Mesa 91942
La Mesa Wine Works – 8167 Center Street La Mesa 91942 - Website: www.sanpasqualwinery.com
- Phone: 619-462-1797
- Email: linda@sanpasqualwinery.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/sanpasqualwinery
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/sanpasqualwinery
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/SanPasqualWine
- Yelp: www.yelp.com/biz/San-pasqual-winery-Seaport-village-San-Diego
Getting in touch: SDVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
