Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/62507
CO VER S T OR Y structures, not gems of wine country architecture. Local cab drivers still scratch their heads when told of the destination. But on a recent Friday night, 1,000 people managed to find their way to a sold-out Food Truck Frenzy, lubricated with Rock Wall wines, in the spacious parking lot. Hidden benefits of repurposing Rock Wall's new home was built by the Navy in 1991 and used for six years to spray-paint enamel coatings on jet fighters. The legacy of that era is wide-open floor space, extremely high ceil- ings and massive retractable doors to the outside world, eight feet thick. The existing electrical system was more than any winery would ever need; the facility's walls are interlaced with heating elements capable of raising the room temperature to 150°F, great for baking on enamel but not much use for wine- making. All Rock Wall needed for retrofitting was a handful of new power boxes in convenient places, a job handled by TEC Electrical, a local company. The old painting function made one heck of a mess, so one side of the Rock Wall facility came with built-in floor drains. The only problem, according to Shauna Rosenblum, was that some of the sanitizing agents used in the winery soaked off paint flecks from the floor, sometimes clogging the drains. The solution: sand the floor back down to the cement. The facility also came with built-in wastewater processing capacity—housed in a room ominously labeled "Toxic Waste- water Treatment System." Changes to the plumbing needed to go from fighters to fermentations included installation of a grinding pump and were handled by another local contractor, BC Plumbing. The building now used by Rock Wall Wine Co. is located at the former Naval Air Station Alameda, where it was used for painting fighter jets. The final advantage stemming from the previous occupancy lies in temperature control. Because of the size of the rooms, the thickness of the walls and doors and the proximity to San Francisco Bay (a few hundred yards), the ambient temperature inside Rock Wall never goes much above or below 50°-55°F any time of the year, and the influence of the Bay also guarantees that humidity stays in range. The one exception to this no-cost thermal regime is a cold room constructed in one corner of the winery by Refrigeration Systems.com, where cool air is circulated by big fans to accommodate cold soaks, a step all Rock Wall reds go through. Once the macro bins full of crushed grapes are ready for fermentation, they get moved outside, where harvest season temperatures run in the low 80°s. If some bins aren't getting high enough fermentation temperatures, Wines & Vines OCTOBeR 2011 29