Split personality
By DeAnn Justesen,
California Coastal Wine Magazine
Don Peters knew early on that his taste in wine ran toward quality. He also knew drinking expensive wines could put a crimp in his mechanic’s budget.
His answer? Make his own high-quality wines.
Thus Don Peters, mechanic with a passion for restoring 1955-57-era Chevys, became Don Peters, winemaker with a passion that runs to cabernet, merlot and chardonnay.
Today his two businesses, Don Peters Automotive and Cerro Caliente Cellars, operate out of the same space in an understated San Luis Obispo industrial park. The wine barrels and presses are just feet from the auto equipment. The tasting room, decorated with wallpaper borders and grapevines hand-stenciled on the floor by his wife, Carol, is separated only by a door.
“A lot of the people who enjoy my wines are my auto customers,” said the 57-year-old Peters, who has been a mechanic in the San Luis Obispo area for 30 years.
In 2002, the award-winning winery produced more than 700 cases of what Peters calls “character-crafted wines” that are sold at the winery, through a wine club, at some area restaurants and at several wine shops along the Central Coast.
But when he and a neighbor, Phil Vierra, began making wine in the basement of Peters’ Paso Robles home in 1990, they were interested only in producing something to drink and share with friends.
“He had a collection of cuttings that he loosely called a vineyard,” said Peters of that first vintage. “It wasn’t vinegar. It was drinkable, but it wasn’t what we are making today.”
Job commitments eventually pulled the two apart, but Peters continued his quest to make high-quality wine. He read everything he could about wines and winemaking and tried to determine what it was he liked about individual vintages.
“I tried to craft a wine I would be proud to put my name on,” he said.
In 1997 his chardonnay, made from locally grown grapes, was judged the best white whine at the Mid-State Fair in Paso Robles. That same year he also won two gold medals at the Indy International Wine Competition, an event affiliated with Purdue University. “You don’t have to donate a wing to the hospital to win at Indy,” Peters said. “When you win something there, you know you actually earned it.”
He won five awards for his wines that year, and Carol suggested he bond his winery.
“Maybe by selling our wines, I could at least pay for my hobby,” Peters explained.
Carol admitted she was surprised he actually started selling his wines: “I thought it would be just for fun on his part.”
Cerro Caliente, a Spanish phrase that means “hot hills,” was born Aug. 10, 1998. That first year, Peters made only 320 gallons of chardonnay and cabernet. He has increased his offerings to include merlot, syrah, pinot grigio, pinot noir, a white cabernet and his specialty, a Bordeaux-like blend he calls multiviscosity.
The current offering is made from ’98 cabernet, ’99 merlot and 2001 cabernet franc grapes.
“It allows you to make something better than its parts,” Peters said of the multiviscosity. “You have fully mature wines that are already good, and it allows you to add younger fruit and get a flavor and aroma that’s totally different than any of the parts.”
For someone who studied mechanical engineering at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and learned almost everything he knows about wines from experimentation and the many books his wife bought him, Peters has a knowledge of winemaking that is impressive. He easily discusses barrel aging, cold fermentation, the grapes produced by the microclimates of San Luis Obispo County and the whole process of hand-producing wines, with anyone who will listen.
“If you have an interest and a love of it, you learn it,” he said.
His love of the process is evident as he talks about the dry Edna Valley area that produces the smaller grapes with a better skin-to-fruit ratio that go into his syrah or the great mouthfeel of green apples and pear in his pinot grigio.
Making wine, he said, is “an opportunity to be able to put together something that brings pleasure, that’s not everyday.”
Since he already had his home winemaking equipment and the space, the cost of starting a winery was minimal – he estimates about $8,000; the time commitment of running two businesses is something else.
The winery is open every weekend, plus Fridays, during the summer months, and the winemaking season can start as early as August and run as late as January. And that’s not even mentioning the auto business.
Peters likes to say he works half days – 12 hours.
“It’s a labor of love,” he said. “If work every becomes a four-letter word I won’t do it, and neither of these has become a four-letter word.”
What the winery has become is a family business. His son-in-law Patrick Nunéz, an import car mechanic, designed the labels; daughter Mitzi Nunéz, a teacher, rujns the tasting room; his wife helps with the winemaking and makes all the food for special tasting events; and his grandchildren Trevor and Kayla Nunéz crush grapes.
Peters sees a time when he might retire from the auto business, move to a more rural area and run a small winery out of his home. But for now he’s content to concentrate on both wines and cars.
“We are relay fortunate to be able to do two things we love under one roof, separated by a door, but not really separate,” he said.