Foot-Stomping Music

WEST COAST CHAMBER MUSICIANS ARE TALKING ABOUT THE UNRIVALED ACOUSTICS OF A LITTLE-known space south of the Mexican border that smells of red wine and was never intended as a concert hall: the Sala de Tintos at the Bodegas de Santo Tomas, the former red wine storeroom of a vintner in Ensenada, Baja California.

“The sound is incredibly alive,” says Jane Zwerneman, a French horn player who regularly performs with the Orquesta de Baja California. “It’s so-oo evocative.”

Zwerneman describes a space where everything is shadowy. It has “great beams, rows of kegs and half-kegs along the walls. The smell of wine permeates the place. Five of the half-kegs are used as dressing rooms--that’s how large they are. You seat 300 people [on chairs] on the floor. There’s also a balcony at the back. We have done concerts so crowded they have seated eight or 10 people on chairs on top of some of these kegs.”

Word about the acoustics began to spread four years ago, after vineyard management decided to return their red wines to the original mountainside storage caves of Santo Tomas, which are closer to the winemaker’s vineyards south of Ensenada. In an act of community benevolence, it opened up the facility for concerts. Because of the sound quality, and because so many musicians fell in love with the place, it became Ensenada’s de facto cultural center.

Last spring, when plans leaked out that a section of the bodegas was to be torn down to make way for a supermarket parking lot, outraged citizens literally linked hands to stop bulldozers. Baja California’s state cultural commission voted to preserve the structure, the adobe section of which dates to at least 1913. Now its supporters just need the governor’s signature to make the bodegas a state historic site.