New & Innovative North County highlights locally-owned small businesses that add to the unique character of North County. To have your small business considered for a future article, email Caitlyn Canby at ccanby@sdnedc.org.
Hear directly from the natural winemakers Jody and Emily Towe about their new J. Brix Wines tasting room and bottle shop in North City, San Marcos’ downtown.
Caitlyn: I’m so excited to be here chatting with you. Let’s start with your 30-second elevator pitch – why is J. Brix awesome?
Emily: We’re a family-run winery. We’re from North County. We’ve been making wine here for 15 years. We learned how to make wine in Santa Barbara, but this is our home. So we started out in our garage in 2009 and just steadily grew. We’re very curious winemakers.
There are 17 wines on [our bottle list] right now, but we’ve made more than that. There’s a great variety for anybody who likes wine. We’ve got some kind of unique styles: naturally sparkling, skin-contact white. For people who want to be adventurous or try something new that they’ve never tried before, but we also have…
Jody: The classics.
Emily: Yes. So there’s something for everybody, whether you’re looking to try a new style or just enjoy something that you already know that you like. We are, I believe, the only natural winery and tasting room in North County.
All the vineyards that we work with are being farmed without any synthetics. Some of them are certified organic. Some of them are practicing, but they’re all being really well farmed. That’s really where you start to make good wine – with farming.
We don’t use any commercial yeasts or additives.
There are hundreds of additives that you can use in wine making. For a lot of large producers, they want to make something that’s commercially the same every year. If they’re selling thousands of cases to grocery stores, it’s more like a formula. For us, the “formula” is the growing season.
So the wine will be different from year to year, and that’s all goes back to farming. It’s exciting. It’s alive. It’s an agricultural product that, over many years of history, has always been a thing to bring people together. So it’s unique in that way.
It’s fun. It tells a story, and it can be a different story every time. People enjoy hanging out with their friends and drinking wine. And this is a beautiful place to do it.
J. Brix Wines Tasting Room & Bottle Shop
Caitlyn: What is your favorite wine that you have on your menu now?
Emily: It’s always like choosing your favorite child, honestly. I think right now, What I’m leaning toward as the weather turns, and it starts to be dark earlier and cooler evenings… the La Belle Rêveuse Syrah is really, really nice. It’s very smooth and kind of deep without being heavy. It has really nice savory characteristics that balance out the fruit.
Caitlyn: What about you, Jody? What’s your favorite?
Jody: I’m going to say the red blend right now.
Emily: That’s called “Stay-in-Bed Red.”
Caitlyn: Stay-in-Bed Red! Haha, okay, tell me about that one.
Emily: When we started our first vintage in our garage, we started out with a ton and a half of fruit. A ton of grenache and half a ton of Syrah, so we made separate wines.
But then we wanted to do a blend as well. That was the original Stay-in-Bed Red, which we just came up with the name one night, thinking about a red wine that would appeal to everybody. We wanted to make a wine that no matter what, if you like red wine, you’re going to like this wine.
The first one in the garage, we liked how it turned out. As we started growing and working with more varieties, we had more of a painter’s palette to play with, like a spice rack. So when we make that blend every year, we taste through the barrels and decide which ones we think are going to play nicely together.
Then Jody puts together a bunch of different permutations, so different amounts, like 50 percent this, 30 percent that, 10 percent something. So we have all these different blends, sample blends. Then we taste through them, the two of us, blind, without knowing which is which. It’s marked underneath, but we don’t know.
Then we vote for our favorite. Every time we’ve done it, we’ve chosen the same one. Same blend. That’s always been a constant throughout everything.
Caitlyn: That’s awesome. It really makes you know, “Hey, this is The ONE.”
Emily: Yeah. Every year. It changes a little bit, but that’s the goal. It’s a red wine for everyone.
Caitlyn: I love that. I met your daughter, and she was talking about growing up with this surrounding her and how great an experience that was. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Emily: Yeah, we caught the bug when our kids were little, the winemaking bug.
When we first started out in the garage, we didn’t intend to start a winery. We just had so much fun helping out friends up in the Santa Barbara region that we wanted to do it ourselves. We would take the kids with us almost everywhere, to vineyards, to wineries, to late night dinners with winemakers.
It was just very natural that we had the garage all fitted out like a tiny micro-winery. Our kids would do the punchdowns, which is all part of the winemaking process. It was just a part of life, and it was always fun for them to go on road trips with us, be out in the vineyards and the vines and hanging out with adults who were interested in what they had to say.
Caitlyn: Thinking of winemaking from the natural side, how do you innovate in your business?
Emily: We’re always coming up with new wines, new blends, new ideas. We have some things that we’ve never seen anywhere else in the marketplace because we do work with so many different vineyards and so many different grapes that it gives us the opportunity.
We have a couple of red/white blends here. With bits and pieces, odds and ends of wines that we might make a straightforward traditional wine – like say we make a Riesling that is a single varietal – bottled under the same label every season.
But sometimes we might have a little more of that than others, and think, “What would do well with that?” Sometimes it’s a red. It’s unconventional, for sure, but it’s really fun. It’s definitely brought some unique and delicious wines to the forefront that we wouldn’t have necessarily ever encountered before.
Caitlyn: That’s so fun. How has it been since you’ve been here in North City?
Emily: It’s been good. We’ve been really pleased with the neighborhood and with the people around here. Everyone is so friendly. A lot of times people will be out with their kids and just pop in and say, “I like what you’re doing here. I really want you to succeed. I’ll come back another time for a glass of wine.” But I think people have been curious and interested.
Caitlyn: Where do you make your wine? Where is it based?
Emily: It’s about to be in Carlsbad. We’ve been in Escondido for the past 12 years in an industrial facility, and we’re currently in the process of moving to Carlsbad. We’ll be in the Carlsbad Gateway Center. That’s taking place right now.
Jody: Moving full barrels of wine is, yeah, it’s a little work. It’se been going well so far.
Caitlyn: Besides the move to Carlsbad, anything new coming up for you guys?
Emily: My daughter and my mom, her grandma, are crafty gals. So they’re planning on doing some kind of craft workshop every month. There’ll be one coming up pretty soon for Christmas.
We want it to be a community hub, like your neighborhood wine bar where you pop in after work and hang out and say, “Hi.” Right now, it’s just us and Talia [their daughter]. We don’t currently have any other employees. So it’s going to be a real family operation. We know a lot of the local dogs that stop by for treats. And parents who come in with their little ones and hang out.
Jody: We’ve got snacks, and we’re trying to add to that. We’re in the process of bringing in more choices. There’s a roll up door starting to go in next Wednesday, and we’re working with some lighting still.
Caitlyn: Is there anything else that you really want to say to people in North County?
Emily: I mean, really just having that local support for local business. We all love North County. What a wonderful place to be. We’re so lucky.
Jody: Collaborating with other small family businesses, as well. With the cold brew and some with Steady State. We’re all trying to support each other.
I feel like they’re excited that we’re here, and we’re excited to be here and want to also help them out as well. I always knew [the community] was there, but until you have an actual brick and mortar spot, you don’t really know. People coming in, and they’re like, “I’ve been buying your wine for 15 years. I used to live in LA, and now I live here.” It’s just awesome.
Emily: Yeah, wine makes for a community. It’s just a natural thing.
The wines – basically we send them out into the world and then they find their people. Now their people are finding us.
Address:250 N City Dr #10, San Marcos, CA 92078
Hours:
Monday: Closed
Tuesday: 4-8 pm
Wednesday: Closed
Thursday: 4-8 pm
Friday: 4-9 pm
Saturday: 12-9 pm
Sunday: 12- 5 pm
Read more about J. Brix Wines in The Eater San Diego.
Subscribe to our weekly North County business newsletter for more content like this.
About the Author
Caitlyn Canby loves to discover and share people’s stories. She has her bachelor’s degree in Communications with over 10 years of journalism experience. An Escondido native, she lived on Catalina Island off the coast of Long Beach, CA before moving back home to North County. She now lives a little more rurally with her family in the “Friendly Village” of Fallbrook. Caitlyn enjoys collaborating on projects as Chief Operating Officer at SDNEDC, traveling internationally, gaming, and exploring new restaurants, venues, experiences, and cultures.