Today we’d like to introduce you to Stanley Barrios.
Stanley, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was introduced to wine by my girlfriend (now wife) when I was around 22 years old. A simple steak and wine pairing sparked curiosity, trying to understand how the wine complemented the steak and vice versa. Not too long after we found ourselves on vacation in Paso Robles wine country tasting different wines, comparing grape varieties and grape clones, learning about soil types and microclimates and how they all play a role in the identity of a finished wine. I became obsessed with wine. Researching, reading, and watching everything I could about wine.
I began a collection of wine at home from highly regarded producers and sites, mostly domestic wines. At one point, we held about 400 bottles of some of the most sought after domestic “cult” wines along with lesser-known producers that delivered quality at a fraction of the price. We traveled with purpose and consumed food and wine to expand our knowledge. I studied and learned about the best producers, vineyards, and vintages. I very well knew the classic producers and sites in Europe and could talk wine for weeks. We attended wine events and surrounded ourselves with people who shared the same passion and obsession. This led us to build friendships with other collectors in Los Angeles and found ourselves dining and drinking with folks who were much older than us. We traveled with our wise friends to different regions to discover together; sharing stories, wines and food recipes.
My obsession with wine triggered an interest in the kitchen. I began taking a similar path with food, hoarding different kitchen gadgets and executing multi-course dinners for my wife almost daily. I was in sync with my palate, understanding and respecting contrasting textures and flavors in food to harmonize a finished dish that was balanced and complex. I found myself looking at and tasting food the same way I would a wine.
In 2012, I decided I wanted to take a jab at making wine. A small scale batch of wine just to see if my nose and palate could create something more than just average. Living and working in Los Angeles created challenges for this dream of mine. After a long conversation with my wife one night, I convinced her to let me convert our garage into a home winery. We packed boxes, cleared out the garage, cleaned every corner of our two car garage, keeping in mind this was a house rental. I bought small scale wine equipment (carboys, food grade trash bins for fermenting, sanitation equipment, etc. We had everything we thought we needed to make some wine, except the grapes.
We used to attend what was a monthly wine tasting at a wine storage facility called Liquid Asset Cellars in North Hollywood. We became good friends with the owner, Kevin Jones, who always kept the door open for us. One evening he was hosting a young producer from Paso Robles. My wife and I met the winemaker and we all hit it off. After the event we invited him to join us at a live jazz bar called Baked Potato in Universal City. The Baked Potato is place where you go, sit and appreciate the jazz artist performing on stage rather than drinking and socializing. We ended up getting kicked out of the Baked Potato for talking too much during the performance and just before we parted ways, I asked the winemaker if he would sell me fruit so I can make some wine at home in Los Angeles. He said he could get me fruit but instead offered an internship at his winery to learn the craft first hand. I accepted.
In 2013, I saved up all my sick and vacation time from my corporate job so I can work a harvest internship in Paso Robles. I took about three weeks off and found a small cabin rental about 25 minutes away from the winery in Paso Robles to become a cellar rat. Soaking up all the knowledge I could during harvest in the cellar. After my vacation time was over, I would come up every weekend to Paso to pick up where I left off and continued to do so until the last drop of wine was in barrel, about three months total from start to finish.
The following year 2014, I was offered to come back and work again and if I agreed I would have the option of purchasing grapes to start my own program. I agreed, and TOP was born. We started with about 200 cases of wine which turned out to be some really fantastic wine. The following year we more than doubled production to 500 cases, all the while still living and working full-time in Los Angeles. At this point, we were commuting daily during harvest, three hours each way.
When the 2016 vintage came around we were just getting ready to bottle our first vintage (2014). I needed to get compliance approval from my corporate job in Los Angeles to start our business while remaining employed there. They more than approved. They granted me a three months sabbatical to focus full-time on our wine project during harvest. That year we produced 1000 cases worth of wine. After I pressed off our last batch of grapes that harvest, I went back to work Monday, business as usual. I recall being in a meeting my first day back. We were in the corner conference room of the 28th floor overlooking all of Los Angeles (I worked at an investment firm in Downtown LA). White marble table seating 16 people who wore custom tailored button ups and very high-end wristwatches. As I was talking to the seated group, I looked at the palms of my hands and they were heavily stained purple and weathered from my grapes I had just finished processing in Paso. I remember pausing for a few seconds. That was the exact moment where I asked myself “what the fuck am I doing here?” I was over the corporate life.
That night I told my wife I was ready to commit full-time to TOP, which was what she had been pushing me to do since we started it back in 2014. We came up with a plan and created a budget, documented our goals, and wrote down a mission statement for the winery, then in August of 2017 I resigned from my corporate job and moved to Paso Robles to focus on our project. My wife who was at the time a full-time student and held a full-time job remained in LA for another year and half to finish school before moving up with me in January of 2019.
Last year we produced roughly 2000 cases worth of wine. Last month we signed a long-term lease on our own winery for production and tasting room set to open in April of 2020. Our wines are sold 99% direct to consumer which is almost all fully allocated to wine club members. Our project team remains small with just two employees, myself and my wife. My wife, Elena, handles all the hospitality, event planning, legal, compliance, and accounting for the winery. I handle all the winemaking, cellar work, social media and technology for the winery.
Has it been a smooth road?
Man, there’s an endless amount of struggles we faced. To be considerate of everyone’s time, I’ll just name a few.
After our first harvest in 2014, our circle of wine friends were curious about our wines and how they would taste. We decided to host a barrel tasting in Paso Robles for twenty friends. Lucky for us the wines were already tasting great and our friends started committing to wine. Some of them wanted to order cases, while others wanted to join our wine club, which at that point in time was nonexistent. The goal initially was to make one batch of wines to bottle and share with family and friends, not start a business or even to sell the wine but when people started to comment we figured we may be able to make a bit of money. We took orders and club sign ups on a notepad. That night Elena and I began writing down a plan and set ourselves some goals.
A few weeks later, we began getting calls from people asking to taste our wines as word was spreading from our friends who had committed to our wines. We began writing a schedule and taking down appointments on the weekends when we were in Paso. Word started spreading in Paso and we began getting calls for tastings during the week. We would be working in LA when we’d get a call for a same day tasting. We didn’t want to turn down a potential sale so we would tell the potential customer that we only had afternoon tastings available. I would then call Elena and we would decide on who would scurry out of work early to drive up and host the tasting. One of us would leave our job “sick” or tending to an “emergency”, drive up three hours to Paso and host the tasting in the cellar for about 1-2 hours, most of the time for just two people. We might make a sale on those occasions, but sometimes we wouldn’t, and that was a huge bummer but the customer never knew that. We treated everyone the same, like family.
Other times I would have to drive up to Paso to take a wine sample to the lab for analysis. I’d drive up for three hours for 15 minutes of work, then drive back to LA just to sleep and wake up the next morning for work at the corporate job.
I recall one time I went two and half days without sleep on two back to back trips from LA to Paso during harvest. On the way back to LA on this occasion, I remember hallucinating from a lack of sleep. I was on Highway 46 East just about halfway between Paso and the five freeway. I saw trees swaying in the shadows adjacent to the road and birds flying over the highway. I knew I was hallucinating when I remembered that there isn’t trees on that part of the highway and it would’ve been impossible to see birds flying that time of night (2:30am), there are no lights or lamps on this highway so it’s pitch dark. I pulled over and traded seats with my wife to drive. The same night we got a flat tire on the five freeway an hour or so later just before going up the grapevine near El Tejon at around 3:30am. I still made it in time to shower at home then drive to Downtown LA to go to work at the corporate job at 6am. It was brutal.
For our first vintage in 2014, we had access to premium fruit for our program by way of the winemaker that I interned for. The fruit was contracted to him for his program but he sold the fruit to us and we in turn paid him so he can pay the grower. For our second vintage we decided to do things on our own and contract our own premium fruit as we needed to build relationships in Paso if we wanted anyone to take us seriously. I cold called all the best vineyards I knew of in the westside of Paso Robles. I left messages on voicemails and sent emails to the most highly regarded growers. Most of the time, I didn’t hear back, and when I did they would tell me they didn’t have anything available for me “but would keep their eye on our project”.
I didn’t take it the wrong way, I totally understood. I had no credibility, no formal wine education, and only had one vintage under my belt that was still in barrel aging so had nothing to show. Growers spend a lot of time and money growing the absolute best clusters they can year-round. They want to make sure the fruit they worked so hard growing goes into the right hands which can help make a name for their vineyard.
I didn’t realize how hard it was to get premium fruit as a new producer and that was really stressful. One thing I learned is that the quality of a finished wine his highly dictated by the quality of the growing/vineyard it came from. Only the best fruit makes the best wine. We eventually found a grower that would take a chance with us that year but our vision didn’t align and we ended up declassifying some of the wine that year which was a bit discouraging considering it was our second vintage.
In 2016 word was getting out about our project and with our first vintage now in bottle I was able to show the growers that I wanted to work with what I can do with some premium grapes. Since then, we’ve been able to secure fruit from all the growers we’ve wanted fruit from and are working with some of the best growers in the westside of Paso Robles.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the TOP story. Tell us more about the business.
We are TOP. Producers of Rhône varietal wines out of westside Paso Robles. Our name comes from a spinning top, one of the oldest toys in history. Its intentions are to keep spinning steadily while maintaining balance within itself. Similar to what we experience in life, always in continuous motion – like a spinning top – we strive to maintain balance. We use the name TOP as a metaphor for balance both in our wines and in our lives.
We currently make seven different wines, two white wines and five red wines. Our goal is to produce wines that carry intensity, structure, balance and soul. We don’t overcomplicate the winemaking process and rely solely on our senses to craft our wines, rather than science.
Our business is homegrown and remains that way, now six years in. Because our sales are almost entirely direct to consumer we know all of our customers who we now consider friends and family. We are proud of that and plan to continue growing with this vision. Our project is more than just a business. It’s not only our livelihood but also our passion. My goal as a winemaker is unachievable and also something that I will continually strive for. This goal helps me to continually elevate and refine our wines year after year.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Paso Robles as a wine region and wine destination has drastically changed over the last five years that I’ve been here. Local businesses are raising the bar on quality and other regions are beginning to notice.
We’re getting a lot more press from the media on our restaurants, breweries, distilleries and wineries. New developments are starting to pop up around town and visitor traffic has been drastically increasing. The hospitality in Paso is second to none and we hear that from visitors almost daily. We’re also starting to see producers and restauranteurs from other regions come into Paso to start projects here. Paso is going to be the next big thing.
Pricing:
- Most of our red wines are sold at $68 a bottle
- Our white wines are priced at $48 a bottle
Contact Info:
- Address: 2323 Tuley Road
Paso Robles, CA 93446 - Website: www.topwinery.com
- Phone: 8059759704
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @topwinery.com
- Facebook: @topwinery.com
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