Among the early, brave souls to tackle winemaking in Santa Barbara County, Bill Wathen and Dick Doré turned a messy hobby into a booming business. In the nearly 30 years since they slid a fresh cork into their first bottle of wine, the pair has earned global fame as “the Foxen boys.”
“I remember, 1985, when we made our first wine,” Doré said. “We borrowed a press from Harold Pfeiffer at Rancho Sisquoc, and he put it in the back of Billy’s truck. We drove it to the old barn and realized we didn’t have any way to lift it out of the truck. So we pressed our first wine right in the back of that old truck.”
Today, their enterprise, Foxen Vineyard and Winery, sits in a bucolic curve of Foxen Canyon Road, about a dozen miles south of Santa Maria. Until a few months ago, the compound consisted of a 130-year-old hay barn converted into a winery, and a beyond-rustic “shack” (actually a 19th-century blacksmith shop that once served horses plying the adjacent stagecoach trail) that served as the sole tasting room.
With success comes change, and the Foxen boys have entered a fresh phase with the recent opening of their brand-new winery and tasting room. Located a few hundred yards down the road from the original facility, this grand complex features a 12,000-square-foot solar-powered winery and a separate, airy tasting room with ceiling fans, two tasting bars, and lots of natural light.
After a full year of planning and construction, Dick Doré, Jenny Williamson Doré, Bill Wathen, and his wife, Becky Barieau, announced the opening of their new facility on Aug. 20. With young, freshly installed native California plants decorating the landscape and still-pristine paths leading to the doors of the tasting room, it has the look of an upscale, yet understated country spread.
“Just to have everything under one roof for the first time,” said Jenny Williamson Doré, “to have a covered area, true temperature and humidity control, and to do it all with solar power is very cool.
“The joke that Dick always makes about the old facility,” she continued with a laugh, “is that the barrels have been holding up the barn.”
Equipped with 216 solar panels providing an estimated 60,000-kilowatt hours of energy annually, the new winery can power itself—and then some.
“We pump into the grid most of the year,” Williamson Doré explained. “During harvest, our electrical needs will exceed our solar capacity, and then we’ll draw from the grid, but at the end of the year it balances out.
“Everything is computerized,” she continued. “When it gets dark, solar energy stops flowing onto our panels, but if it’s still hot in the winery, large fans will kick on, making the most efficient use of energy.”
Citing the dollar value of the hundreds of gallons of wine lost to evaporation in the old, uninsulated barn, combined with cost-cutting tax rebates, Williamson Doré estimates the massive solar system will pay for itself in just a few years.
“The most gratifying thing,” she said, “is we did this in a practical, esthetic way, and with as small a footprint as we possibly could. And that is the thing we are so proud of.
“As Dick, Bill, Becky, and I stand in awe of the whole thing,” she added, “we realize that not only did we pull it off—it only took 25 years—but we did it in a responsible way.”
To celebrate their achievement, the Foxen crew invites all fans and newcomers to join them for a gala open house at the new tasting room the weekend of Sept. 26 and 27. Staffers will pour a tempting line-up of rare library wines, as well as current releases from the Burgundy and Rhone programs featured at the new location.
Devotees of the old Foxen Winery experience needn’t worry, however, for the “shack” tasting room up the road, now called Foxen 7200, lives on as the place to taste the producer’s Cal-Ital and Bordeaux offerings.
“This way people get to taste at the two facilities in a little more focused way,” Williamson Doré explained. “People have been concerned about losing the shack, and I want to emphasize that our beloved shack will remain open.
“We hope people will come out and taste at the new facility,” she continued. “It has climate control, flushable toilets—I personally won’t miss the shack’s porta-potties—it’s comfortable and rustic, and very much in keeping with Foxen.
“We’re still Foxen,” she smiled, “and we’re so appreciative of people who come out so far to taste with us. We’re always humbled by that.”
K. Reka Badger is solar powered. Contact her at rekabadger@hotmail.com.
This article appears in Sep 3-10, 2009.