Churches Keep Winery in Good Spirits

Altar wine, the sweet, high-alcohol nectar poured at church services, may not be the industry’s most exciting or lucrative product, but for San Antonio Winery, it’s one of its fastest-growing lines.

Although the sagging economy has flattened sales of premium wine, the downtown Los Angeles winery has seen its altar wine sales grow, thanks to greater church attendance and an industry consolidation that has forced more wineries out of this niche.

Originally a means to survive Prohibition, San Antonio’s altar wine production now averages more than 60,000 cases a year. That’s dwarfed by the millions of cases of premium wines sold yearly by big players such as Robert Mondavi, but it is more than the annual output of many small and medium-size California wineries.

The altar wine business has gotten so good that the winery has even converted a few of its elderly salespeople to “church specialists” to peddle it.

Although there are different blends of altar wine for different churches--some use Muscat and others use San Antonio’s sherry-style Angelica, for example--there are no religious production requirements. Altar wine is like any other wine, albeit cheaper and sweeter.

It’s not glamorous, and San Antonio’s Fresno-grown grapes probably won’t win the winery any awards. But it’s an extremely reliable business, said co-owner Steve Riboli, especially in weak economic times.

San Antonio’s altar wine sales have surged since Sept. 11, winery officials say, as church attendance has swelled. “More people are going to Mass,” said Michael Lotito, a salesman who calls on 400 Catholic, Episcopalian and Lutheran churches. “People don’t cut back on church in hard times.”

Selling these holy spirits has paid other dividends for San Antonio, which also grows grapes in Napa Valley, Monterey and the Central Coast. It’s generated additional sales for its 12 premium wines and allowed the winery’s older salespeople, such as 68-year-old Lotito, to remain in the work force.

Plus, it has given the winery the honor of being the first to produce fine wine for L.A.’s new cathedral. When the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels opens downtown next year, its gift shop will feature a $32 Cathedral Cabernet and other varietal wines by the San Antonio Winery.

“In addition to taking home photos and crucifixes, you can bring home something to share with your family,” Riboli said.

Although it might seem a bit commercial, archdiocese spokesman Tod Tamberg said that given California’s history of wine making by Franciscan missionaries, church officials felt it was a fitting souvenir for visitors to take home.

These aren’t the kind of milestones that wine makers in Napa and Sonoma might boast of, but then the San Antonio winery, the last of the city’s original wineries, located in the gritty warehouse district south of downtown, has always relied on something other than cachet to survive.

Its tasting room has relied on the business of immigrants, senior citizens and church groups to remain afloat. Its restaurant, named for Riboli’s mother and longtime company strategist Maddalena, isn’t a hot spot. In fact, it isn’t even open past 6 p.m. for dinner, even on the weekends.

“I don’t want to be trendy,” said Steve Riboli. “We are much more focused on relationships and reliability.”

Although the Riboli family has become known in the wine industry, especially as it has purchased vineyards up and down the state, the San Antonio Winery is not a familiar name to most wine enthusiasts.

It has done little to promote its fine wines--such as Maddalena, San Simeon, Aliente del Sol and Santo Stefano--nationally, even though national sales make up one-third of its business.

For years, the company sold its best Napa Valley grapes to Robert Mondavi to use for his Reserve Cabernet. Only in the last two years has the Riboli family sold the wine from these grapes under its own label.

“Maddalena is quite a large national brand,” said wine consultant Eileen Fredrikson. But, she said, when people see Maddalena in the supermarket, they have no idea it comes from a little winery in Los Angeles.

And the people who visit the winery probably have no idea how large the company really is.

San Antonio makes 400,000 cases of wine a year at its two wineries in Los Angeles and Paso Robles, enough to put it in the top 30 of the state’s 900 wineries.

Most of these wines sell for $10 to $19 a bottle, except for a few wines such as the Riboli Cabernet, which sells for about $39, and its altar wine, which wholesales for about $4 a bottle.

Riboli, the great-nephew of winery founder Santo Cambianica, who started the business in 1917, runs the business with his brother Santo, his sister Kathy and his parents, Stefano and Maddalena.

Santo’s son Anthony, a viticulturist by training, also has begun work there, coming up with ways to improve the quality of the family’s grape-growing operations.

“Overall, their wines appear to be improving,” said wine critic Jim Laube of Wine Spectator magazine. Its 1997 Maddalena Cabernet, which sold for $10, was given a score of 88 out of a possible 100 by the magazine, a high score for a $10 wine.

San Antonio appears to be delivering good-quality wine for the price, Laube said. But it has a lot of competition in that price range, he added.

Still, Fredrikson said, wines in this range don’t appear to have been affected yet by the softening economy. “People will stay at home more and enjoy moderately priced table wine, as opposed to going out and spending money on white-tablecloth wines,” she said.

So far, Riboli said, the less expensive restaurants and bistros such as Hof’s Hut and Crocodile Cafe that San Antonio supplies haven’t cut back on their wine orders.

After surviving through more than eight decades of economic turmoil and social unrest in Los Angeles without having to close or lay off employees, Riboli isn’t worried about the winery’s future.

“My wife thinks I’m crazy, but I think we have this veil protecting us,” Riboli said. He thinks it has a little to do with his family’s continued commitment to supplying wine to the church.

“It’s our foundation. It’s what we survived on, and we’ve never forgotten it,” Riboli said. “It’s our good luck charm.”