About Me
I am Edmond August Sauret and I am what passes for a native in these parts. I have validation for this because the Pioneer Day Committee invites me to its “Old-Timers” annual barbecue and I get to eat free. A person is an Old-Timer if he has lived in Paso Robles for at least fifty years. I have accomplished this with little effort or sacrifice. I love it here.
Edmond Lester Sauret was my father and August Sauret was the name of both my grandfather and an uncle who predeceased my birth by several months in a horrific head-on car crash on the Cuesta Grade.
As is detailed in another page on this site, my grandparents made alcohol for sale during Prohibition. So you can see that it is my calling, even my birthright to be a wine producer. And so I am. Finally and legally. I have the licenses to prove it.
Our project is small and not overly ambitious. I have been around wine for most of my adult life. In the 90’s I was a partner in Eberle winery. I wrote a wine column for a local weekly newspaper for a while when honestly there was not much to write about. For almost twenty years I worked and later ran our family’s fuel distribution business. A good portion of that business evolved into supplying the vineyards and wineries that were popping up in the early seventies. Our customers were the groundbreakers whose successes (and lack thereof) paved the way for the over two hundred wineries that have followed. Our accounts receivable included names like Estrella, Hope Farms, J Lohr, Arciero, Hoffman Mountain Ranch, York Mountain, Justin, Tablas Creek and many others. We liked wine and the people who made it.
For a brief period after the sale of our business, I made wine racks in our garage. While I was serious about it, it was not a viable business. In 1998 I opened Paso’s first wine shop known as the Wine Vault in the same location with our deli The Hot Springs Deli. We converted the former Wells Fargo and First Interstate bank branch to food and wine service use. For five years we had great fun with a truly loyal if not too numerous customer base. Unfortunately the economics were not there and we closed after the 2003 Wine Festival.
Among some truly gifted individuals who worked for us was a young man named Jacob Toft who had just turned twenty-one when he came to work weekends for us as a wine stocker and salesman. Today Jake is our winemaker as well as winemaker for several other projects including his own label. I wouldn’t be on the production side of the wine business if it weren’t for him.
The Wine Vault had one pleasant by-product though. During our short tenure dozens of new wine projects were started in Paso Robles. It was great fun meeting, feeding and socializing with the new winemakers, vineyard owners who have sinced shaped the booming Paso Robles region. We sold the first wines of Linne Calodo, Tablas Creek, Lone Madrone, Villa Creek, Treana, L’Aventure, Fratelli Perata, Stillman Brown and many others. Some of these friendships have evolved into purchase relationships with our vineyard sources. So that’s a good thing.
So what do I have to do with the winery project? I sort fruit, pick jacks, clean tanks, barrels or anything else that needs it. In short I do whatever needs to be done that others don't have time or the inclination. Jake and I chose the final blends of the wines, but lately I've been taking a bit more control of that.
Occasionally they let me drive the forklift. Film at eleven.