Grapes, Grit, and Determination

Every winery has a beginning. Ours involved three tons of grapes, a lot of borrowed space, more than a few pivots, and the determination to keep going.

The MCV story began in 2011 with just three varietals: Petite Sirah, Syrah, and Grenache. By 2013, we had grown to four wine labels—Red, Pink, Rosewynn Vineyard Petite Sirah, and 1105. What started small was beginning to look a lot like the winery we had imagined.

But building a winery doesn't happen overnight—or necessarily in one place.

In those early years, we produced our wines at Pacific Wine Services and stored our case goods at Nunnos. From 2013 to 2015, MCV became part of First Crush in Paso Robles, joining the group of wineries that helped establish the early Tin City wine community. It gave us our first opportunity to welcome guests, pour our wines, and begin building relationships with the people drinking them.

In 2015, our story took us west to Morro Bay, where we opened an MCV tasting room of our own. For the next four years, Morro Bay became our home away from the winery—a place where we could introduce people to MCV, grow our following, and continue figuring out exactly what we wanted the MCV experience to become.

But while our tasting room was on the coast, our winemaking roots remained in Paso Robles.

And eventually, those two parts of our story were ready to come back together.

Finding Our Way Home to Paso Robles

At the end of 2019, we were ready for the next chapter of MCV.

We officially closed our Morro Bay tasting room on December 31, 2019, and moved out—literally on the last day of the year. The plan was to move everything into our new space on Ruth Way and spend January settling into our new home in Paso Robles.

That was the plan.

Instead, the wine—and quite a bit of the tasting room—came home with us.

Cases of wine, sofas, chairs, and everything else we needed to temporarily stash somewhere ended up at our house. At one point, cases were stacked three-high down the hallway leading all the way to the boys' room.

We thought we'd be settling into Ruth Way by the end of January. Our barrels didn't make it into the new winery until mid-February, and by the time we were finally ready to open the tasting room, it was March 2020.

Our timing could not have been worse.

When the Plan Changes, Make a New One

Like everyone else, we suddenly found ourselves navigating something none of us could have planned for.

We had spent months preparing to open a new tasting room—and almost immediately, we couldn't use it.

So we started figuring things out.

When guests couldn't come to the tasting room, we created at-home wine tasting kits so they could bring a little bit of MCV home instead.

When tasting rooms were allowed to reopen but had to serve food, we brought in a pop-up chef.

Then we closed again.

Then we could reopen—but only outdoors.

There was just one small problem:

We didn't have any outdoor seating.

So Teresa built cabanas out of pallets.

Because apparently that's what you do when you open a winery during a pandemic.

It was chaotic. The rules kept changing, the plan kept changing, and most of the time we were figuring out what came next at exactly the same time as everyone else.

But we kept going.

Looking back, that period became one of the clearest examples of what building MCV has always required: the willingness to adapt, get creative, and make something work even when it looks nothing like the original plan.

And somehow, through all of it, Ruth Way finally became home.