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OR CO VER S T OR Y TECHNICAL REVIEW CALIFORNIA NV Napa Sacramento San Francisco Pacific Ocean Rock Wall Wine Co. Oakland CALIFORNIA Monterey When Rock Wall Wine Co.'s large retractable doors are rolled up, the San Francisco skyline is fully visible. A Bigger, Better Warehouse tarting a little more than three decades ago, veteri- narian Kent Rosenblum made the leap from making wine at home to a tiny commercial operation, then to a slightly bigger operation and finally taking over a hulking former ship-building facility in Alameda, Calif., and making it home to one of the state's lead- ing line-ups of vineyard-designated Zinfandels and other small- batch, high-profile wines. In 2008, when production peaked at 250,000 cases per year, the Rosenblum brand, winery and inventory were sold to Diageo for what must have been a pretty penny. And what did the Rosen- blum family do with the proceeds? They leased S View video in the Wines & Vines Digital Edition. Explore the Rock Wall Wine Co. facility in Alameda, Calif., with its winemaker, Shauna Rosenblum. another abandoned military facility, just down the road, and started all over again as the Rock Wall Wine Co. When I asked Shauna Rosenblum, Kent's daughter and Rock Wall's wine- maker, why the family didn't take the money and buy 50 acres and a mini-chateau in Sonoma, just like the glamour winer- ies, she said, "My parents live in Alameda, and they like their house." And Kent Rosenblum said, "We thought the formula worked pretty well. You get a farm in Sonoma, you're out in the country; here we're in the middle of 10 million wine drink- ers." Simple as that. Opened and bonded in 2008, the same year as the sale of Rosenblum Cellars to Diageo, Rock Wall occupies a leased 40,000-square-foot chunk of the former Naval Air Station 28 Wines & Vines OCTOBeR 2011 Highlights • Rock Wall Wine Co. in Alameda, Calif., shows what urban ware- house winemakers can do with repurposed facilities. • The winery occupies space formerly used for painting airplanes on a decommissioned Naval base, space that came with many useful features already in place. • The plain-vanilla production area now includes a much more sleek, modern tasting room and event facility for an enthusias- tic local following. Alameda, decommissioned as part of a round of base closures in 1997. The Navy still owns the property but subcontracts it to the City of Alameda as the landlord, and the lease details are handled by PM Realty. The facility is several notches less elegant than the previous Rosenblum winery, with all the charm you'd expect from an abandoned military building. But the two giant hangar spaces provide for maximum functionality and flexibility, with room for Rock Wall Wine Co., 10 alternating proprietor tenants, everybody's tanks and barrels, plus enough left over for a couple of bowling alleys. Rock Wall sits on a vast expanse of concrete with no vine- yards in sight, and it is surrounded by equally drab, off-beige Rock Wall Wine Co. pursues quality in glamour-free facility By Tim Patterson