Wine

Thursday, May. 14, 2009

Wine Notes: Ryan Broersma of Paso Wine Centre

He donates all of the proceeds of his retail center for boutique wines to a charity that provides clean water to areas of the world desperate for it

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Some entrepreneurs have a simple dream of having their own business and making enough profit to keep them and their family happy.

Others dream big, with nearly unlimited goals, and that vision that leads them in both unexpected and unchartered directions. Ryan Broersma, the owner of the new Paso Wine Centre that opens this wine festival weekend, is definitely in the latter category.

Broersma, 33, has literally climbed mountains and crossed deserts to achieve his business and personal goals, and this talented and ambitious entrepreneur is forging a road that starts in Paso Robles and ends in the remotest, most poverty-stricken areas of Africa.

With degrees in geography and anthropology from UCSB, Broersma moved to San Luis Obispo in 1999 and started a small business designing and selling rock climbing equipment — a favorite hobby of his. He saw the potential in that niche business, and eventually expanded into a clothing line, an e-commerce site for rock climbing gear, and a distribution company that distributes rock climbing DVDs.

Along the way, Broersma met a friend who owned a Paso Robles winery, and with his rock climbing business humming along, he thought about getting into wine. “So I started thinking, why not start an e-commerce site that focuses on these smaller boutique wineries from Paso,” he recalled.

With a domain name in hand, www.pasowines.com, Broersma developed a business plan. “As that started developing,” he says, “I realized that having a retail shop would really be key.”

Thus the idea for the Paso Wine Centre was born. The location is in a new building at 13th and Park streets, a block off City Park, and is surrounded by popular restaurants and wine tasting rooms. But unlike a typical tasting room that features only one winery, Broersma will be featuring wines from dozens of local wineries, many of which are small and without tasting rooms of their own. Wines include hard-to-get labels such as Terry Hoage, Saxum and Alban, as well as little-known labels such as Cerro Prieto and Torrin. A few premium Santa Barbara County wines are included.

Upon entering, one sees a long wall of Enomatic machines — Italian-made dispensing machines that consumers can access themselves to select 1-ounce tastes from 48 different wines. Up to 400 different wines will be available by the bottle to purchase.

One hundred percent of the proceeds from the profits of the Paso Wine Centre will go to a nonprofit charity Broersma established to help meet the need for clean water in Africa and other developing countries.

His interest in Africa started before he even began his rock-climbing business. In trips to India, Kazakhstan, Guatemala and Kashmir, he made a future promise to himself. “When I was there, I saw just the most horrendous things, you couldn’t even imagine,” he said. “I told myself someday I’d like to do something to give back to people less fortunate.”

That way of giving back, he decided, would be through the provision of clean drinking water. “There are over a billion people who can’t get clean drinking water. I thought I could do my own nonprofit and I think I could do it in a way that restores a lot of credibility back to charity and gives a lot of transparency and donor involvement.”

His nonprofit is called “Wine For Water,” and once his plans were in place for the Paso Wine Centre, he traveled to Ethiopia in early March and identified 11 villages that desperately needed clean water. He started one well while there, and is dedicated to completing the other 10 by the end of the year.

His goals remain ambitious. “We’d like to implement over 100 wells in Ethiopia over the next 18 months, and we have a strong feeling that we’ll be able to do it.” Each well costs $5,000, and can provide clean drinking water to up to 400 people for 20 years.

Ethiopia is just Broersma’s “first campaign.” He eventually wants to expand the program to Uganda, Kenya, Honduras and parts of Asia. “We selected Ethiopia first because the need there is so massive,” he explains.

Broersma hopes as word spreads about his charity, it will be good both for raising money for his cause and creating awareness of Paso Robles as wine country. “I think there’s going to be a lot of national attention because it’s this crazy concept that you have a wine shop and all the proceeds go to putting in water wells in Africa and Asia,” he said. A DVD he developed to help explain the need and the project is available for free at the Wine Centre.

But it’s the end result that really inspires Broersma. “To see the difference, and the difference in their lives,” he says, “it’s really the starting point for people to bring themselves out of poverty.”

Paso Wine Centre

1240 Park St. (13th and Park streets, downtown Paso Robles)

239-9156

Owner: Ryan Broersma

Designer: Larry Gabriel

Wines sold: Up to 400 Paso Robles and Central Coast wines

Cost per taste: Ranging from $1 to $6, depending on wine sampled.

Hours: Monday – Thursday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Sunday, 12 noon to 6 p.m.

Online: www.pasowines.com

Janis Switzer can be reached at 434-5394 or via e-mail at janisswitzer@yahoo.com.