On a side street in Lompoc stands a warehouse-style building with a dual purpose: Production and tasting space for five winemakers plus an intimate concert venue in the middle of the cellar.
Meet SipMusic, a wine club that offers members one bottle of wine four times each year along with live music by local and national musicians.
The Lompoc Wine Factory is a collaboration of Steve and Brandon Bridge, father and son and CEO/founder and director, respectively, of Bridge Business & Entrepreneurial Services, which provides financing, marketing and consulting for Central Coast companies large and small.
Among the company’s various Central Coast projects are longtime Lompoc staple Certain Sparks Music, in which local musician and instructor Randall Sena is a partner, and food truck/eatery Glaze Smokehouse & Barbecue, owned by Mike Glaze, also of Lompoc.
Via his South H Street storefront and recording studio, Sena has honed connections with many local and national musicians, among them Lompoc’s own Jacob Cole and Emily Wryn, as well
as Tom Brosseau.
SipMusic’s wine club debuted in January 2016, said Brandon Bridge, and the Lompoc Wine Factory, at 321 N. D St., opened for production with harvest later that year. Dave Corey, owner with his wife, Becky, of Core Wines, was the first winemaker to set up shop in the cellar, Bridge recalled.
He and Sena wanted to keep SipMusic a one-of-a-kind effort, Bridge explained. “We wanted to do a different style club that wouldn’t alienate private club efforts by Core or Turiya Wines,” he said.
The latter label is owned and produced by Angela Soleno, also of Lompoc.
With their wine-plus-live-music plan, the entrepreneurs “had a unique opportunity to create a club that was strictly a one-bottle (per release) club, not one that just offered three, six or
12 bottles a year,” Bridge said.
In March 2017, SipMusic’s first-quarter release featured a concert by storyteller/guitarist Brosseau, whom NPR has featured, and the wine club bottle was one from Kyle Knapp, owner/winemaker of Press Gang Cellars, Bridge noted.
Brosseau recently returned to the Wine Factory for another concert, and harpist Mary Lattimore was the featured performer during the Oct. 7 SipMusic club release.
Since Lompoc lies between Los Angeles and San Francisco, it’s a “good stop” for musicians traveling the state’s concert route, Bridge said. Most of SipMusic’s concerts take place on Sundays — an ideal day for musicians coming off a Saturday evening gig and preparing to hit the road again come Monday.
The concerts are limited to 50 seats, which are arranged around tables scattered across the cellar floor. Barrels stacked on racks loom above concertgoers, a stage lines one side wall and stage
lights hang from steel beams. The space that by day might house a forklift and fermentation bins, turns by night into a cozy concert hall with solid acoustics.
The wines SipMusic releases are “generally a good representation of the various winemakers who produce wines here,” Bridge said. “Turiya features cabernet sauvignon and big reds, and
Core has wines that are longer-aged.”
While Corey was the first tenant, “having multiple (wine) tenants was our plan all along. We moved here for larger space — more than large enough for just production,” Bridge said.
Along with Corey and Soleno, the winemakers who call the Factory’s cellar and equipment home are Mark Cargasacchi of Jalama Wines, Andrew Turner and Ben Van Antwerp, and wine
produced under the Lompoc Wine Factory label for onsite tasting and sales, both during concerts and by appointment.
While some winemakers relocated to the Wine Factory with their own equipment, others are new to making wine and short the necessary tools, which Bridge makes available on a rental basis. In
essence, it’s a small custom-crush facility.
The Lompoc Wine Factory’s label features several red and white whites, among them a pinot noir, chenin blanc and semillon. Bridge also poured me a house-made brandy crafted from a 2013 pinot noir, and offers sangria and mulled wine during concerts as well as kombucha for guests who prefer a non-alcoholic beverage.
In addition to the winemakers, a handful of other producers, among them Millennial Wines and Imagine Wines, make wines elsewhere but use the facility’s temperature-controlled space for
case storage, Bridge said.
The building houses two production bays, one 4,950 square feet and the other 3,300; the tasting space and a rehearsal/jam space up front as well as the cold storage room.
In a space adjacent to the tasting bar stands a drum set; sometimes rehearsing musicians spill over from Certain Sparks’ studio space and use it, or it becomes the focal point of late-night jam
sessions, Bridge said.
— Laurie Jervis blogs about wine at www.centralcoastwinepress.com, tweets at @lauriejervis and can be reached via winecountrywriter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are her own.