Matt Reidy and Annie Gastelum, Bluxome Winery
“Passion can take you so far, but also be realistic...you need to engage the industry and the people in it.”
Matt Reidy has long had a love affair with wine.
“It started in college. I had the great luck of having two roommates: One was the Budweiser representative on campus, and the other was the head waiter at the best French restaurant in town,” said Reidy. And he’d bring home half empty bottles of wonderful wines. One day he brought home a bottle of old burgundy, which is pinot noir. I tried it and I said ‘wow, what is that about.’ That was my aha moment, and my awakening to what quality wine was about and the passion that went into it.”
From there, he notes with a chuckle, that started him on a “ruinous path of obsessive collecting.” Looking for a place to keep all of his newly acquired wine treasures, he built a wine cellar at his house. From there, he took the next natural step of making wine in his garage.
“We bought some grapes...and it was like a village experience. We brought the neighbors and friends together, and they helped us triage through half a ton of grapes, which took us 8 hours. We foot stomped it, we fermented it in the basement, and then pressed it with an old Italian basket press and put it in a barrel.”
To Reidy’s delight, the wine turned out extremely well. So well, in fact, his friends told him to submit it to a county fair, where he ultimately won best of show. From there, his friends were urging him to sell it, however, there was just one problem.
“When you make wine at home, you can’t re-sell it. You can give it as gifts, but that’s it.”
At the constant pleading of friends, he decided to turn his side passion into a business and put together a limited batch of 150 cases. The accolades continued to pour in from the wine industry and media, so there was only one thing left to do.
“I always knew this great story of San Francisco being the nexus of the American wine industry. One hundred years ago, there were 120 wineries and commercial cellars in San francisco...i had three great grandparents roaming the city at that time, right around the 1906 earthquake, so I have family roots here. I thought, why don’t we bring these ideas together, our family history and the wine making history that happened here in San Francisco.”
Two years later, he found the perfect building to bring his idea to life, and that was the beginning of Bluxome Street Winery. It’s a fully functioning winery situated in the heart of San Francisco, and includes a tasting room where people can come and enjoy, what else, Reidy’s famous (and favorite) pinot noir.
He is also careful to hire people who share his passion for wine, like Annie Gastelum, who ditched her PR career to pursue her sommelier certificate, while helping run the tasting floor at Bluxome.
“It’s a little crazy, but I have wonderful people to help us grow and drive the business.”
Asked what his biggest asset was in turning his passion into a business?
“Passion can take you so far, but also be realistic...you need to engage the industry and the people in it.”
