Vintage Collection : Couple Aims to Please, Whether You Like Wine or Wheels

Two years ago, Robert and Lila Knapp decided it was time to merge their passions with their interests. The San Diego couple scoured the county before settling on a site just north of Escondido, and there they set up shop.

Now, they’re the proud owners of a vineyard and wine tasting room they call Deer Park Market Place. But they’ve planted more than grapes on their land, which is nestled in a green valley in the hills around Escondido. Deer Park is also home to Robert’s automobile museum, filled with his collection of 55 classic or near-classic cars.

“You might say that we produce vintage wines and have vintage cars,” Robert said.

Silent partners in a Napa Valley vineyard, the Knapps, both 54, figured their Escondido Deer Park Market Place would help promote their Northern California wine of the same name.

“Plus, we needed a place to put all the cars,” said Lila, recalling a time when her husband’s cars took up most of the parking places on their block while living in San Diego.

“He had so many cars parked up and down the block that sometimes he would forget which ones were his,” she said.

Robert’s passion for the sleek and stylish cars of the 1950s and ‘60s began when he was an auto-crazy kid growing up in Palm Springs.

“I used to sit on street corners and watch the classic Cadillacs of that day drive by,” he said. He’s been in love with cars all his life and purchased his first automobile--a 1931 Buick--when he was 16. But that car he bought to use. For the past 33 years, he’s been collecting old cars--he’s retained a soft spot for Buicks--and restoring them.

Knapp, who with his wife runs a publishing business in San Diego which has been in operation since the 1950s, jokes that he owns so many cars because “I didn’t come from a Cadillac family.”

At the center of Knapp’s collection is a jet black 1953 Cadillac El Dorado which his wife calls his pride and joy.

“It’s like the one Elizabeth Taylor had in that movie ‘A Place in the Sun,’ ” she said.

The oldest car in Knapp’s collection is a Benz Velo, which dates from the 1880s and resembles a horse buggy.

The fleet of cars sits in two showrooms, one of which doubles as a gift shop and overlooks rows and rows of Chardonnay-producing grapes.

The Knapps, by their account the only producers of Chardonnay in the county, send the fruits of their harvest to Napa Valley for processing, but have yet to produce any wine from the local grapes. They expect to, though, in a few years.

“This type of wine is usually grown more up north because the climate is better,” Lila said.

She said that because of the warmer, drier climate in San Diego County, they wouldn’t consider growing grapes on a larger scale. The last harvest produced 6 1/2 tons of grapes.

But, Robert said, his collection of cars will continue growing.

“The cars of the 1950s and 1960s had a lot of style,” he said.

“People see these cars and they remember what it was like back then . . . It’s real nostalgia.”

Also, the cars have helped business, he said.

“A lot of times one member of a family will look at the cars and another will shop for the wines.”