SLO County wineries and breweries can fully reopen — but some changes are here to stay
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SLO County Reopening Guide
This story is part of the SLO County Reopening Guide, providing you with what you need to know as the state’s economy officially reopens June 15. Read more of the stories here:
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Editor’s note: This week, The Tribune is publishing a series of stories looking at California’s June 15 reopening and what it means for San Luis Obispo County.
Starting this week, San Luis Obispo County’s famed wineries and breweries will be able to reopen at full capacity following a challenging year of COVID-19 restrictions.
Local vintners and brewers are almost universally coming out of the pandemic with changed businesses.
Some have weathered tasting room closures, food sale requirements and a stymied wholesale market better than others.
But they’re all eager to get back to serving wine and beer lovers.
“I think it’s going to be a relief,” said Amanda Brown, tasting room manager at Baileyana, an Edna Valley winery. “We’re excited to see more people.”
What should winery and brewery customers expect after June 15?
Starting Tuesday, all tasting rooms can open at full capacity, with reservations and masking requirements left to owners’ discretion.
The full reopening comes one week after the county moved into the yellow tier of California’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy, the least-restrictive level.
For wineries and breweries, that meant they could increase their capacity to 50%, although they had to implement a reservation system and limit tastings to 90 minutes.
Vintners and brewers could begin offering indoor tastings at 25% capacity under the orange tier, which the county reached in late April. The state stopped requiring all wineries and breweries to serve food with drinks in March.
Wineries shift toward reservations, by-appointment tasting
Although owners are now allowed to drop their reservation systems, several wineries told The Tribune they intend to keep them, especially on weekends. Wine enthusiasts should check with tasting rooms in advance, in case the wineries they plan to visit aren’t taking walk-ins.
Some tasting rooms will also still require their staff to mask up while working, so don’t expect to see face coverings disappear entirely.
After Tuesday, Baileyana will maintain its current setup — which involves a combination of group tasting reservations and walk-ins — because it allows staff to better manage weekend crowds, Brown said. Walk-ins are still welcome, especially on weekdays when there are fewer people out tasting, she said.
“We’ve decided, for now, to keep our reservations,” Brown said. “It seems to work really well for us.”
Talley Vineyards in Arroyo Grande also plans to keep a reservation system in place, as it “really aligns better with our brand and the quality of our product,” owner Brian Talley said.
While the vineyard’s tasting room was closed during the pandemic, Talley remodeled it and removed the bar in favor of tables for seated, by-appointment tastings. He said the shift had been in the works before the coronavirus, but he decided to move forward with the change during that time.
Reservations allow staff to customize tasting experiences to provide visitors with more or less attention, depending on their preferences, Talley said. Tasting at the bar brought in a bigger crowd, but staff had to focus more on pouring wine and couldn’t spend as much time talking to customers.
“I would really rather welcome a little bit smaller group of people who are more curious about what we do,” Talley said.
Boutique wineries thriving with online, wine club sales
Some smaller wineries that don’t distribute wholesale and sell entirely to a loyal collection of customers have done well during the pandemic, in spite of closures and less tasting room traffic.
“E-commerce exploded for us last year,” said Kevin Jussila, owner and winemaker at kukkula in the west Paso Robles region of Adelaida.
Jussila said he saw a “flood of business” when the tasting room reopening last year after a five-month closure.
“Everyone was trapped,” he said. “Wineries were a quick, easy escape.”
However, summers are typically not kukkula’s busy time of year. Locals, the winery’s best customers, typically go on vacation at this time of year, he said. Plus, wine lovers don’t usually like to tote wine around in hot Paso Robles weather.
Springtime prior to Memorial Day and September into November, during the harvest, are kukkula’s most popular times of year, Jussila said.
“I think we have a very loyal customer base,” he said. “I think that’s replicated by a lot of boutiques.”
Breweries prepare to welcome more customers
Breweries that relied on traffic to their taprooms, or on restaurants distributing pints of their beer, are ready to start serving more customers after a tough year.
BarrelHouse Brewing Co., based in Paso Robles at Tin City, reopened its all-indoor San Luis Obispo taproom on May 20 after being closed for more than a year, said Jason Carvalho, owner and president.
“We’re excited because we’re going to be able to have twice the capacity inside,” he said. “So it’s going to have a big impact on our San Luis location.”
Staff will still keep an eye on the taproom’s capacity, so customers shouldn’t expect an entirely packed bar, Carvalho said.
“People for the most part are respectful,” he said. “They’re just happy to get back to some sort of normalcy.”
The brewery’s three other locations in Paso Robles, Fresno and Visalia are all outdoor-based and weren’t affected as much by the pandemic restrictions, Carvalho said: “That’s always been a big part of our business model.”
However, the San Luis Obispo taproom — which is set up speakeasy-style downstairs from Mike’s Barber Shop — had no pre-existing outdoor element. And the brewery couldn’t get a parklet, like some other downtown businesses, because of the layout of Chorro Street, Carvalho said.
Pre-pandemic, three-quarters of the company’s revenue stream came from “on-premise” purchases, or beverages customers bought at taprooms, restaurants, bars and events.
To make things work while the coronavirus raged, BarrelHouse shifted staff and resources toward growing the company’s other forms of distribution, such as sales at grocery stores and other retailers.
“We were able to take all this talent, all these resources, all these people and focus it on that area of the business,” Carvalho said.
BarrelHouse ultimately improved those sales by 45% to 50% and is in a good position coming out of the pandemic, he said.
“It was a really challenging year,” Carvalho said. “I think our company is stronger than ever.”
This story was originally published June 15, 2021 at 12:31 PM.
