San Diego Reader

• Winery | Solana Beach

Carruth Cellars

• 320 South Cedros Avenue #400, Solana Beach, CA 92075 | Directions
• 858-847-9463 | Website

In 1998, Carlsbad native Adam Carruth was “kind of a life student — just [kept] going back to school.” He’d studied botany at UC Riverside, so for a change of pace, he headed north to Sonoma and started in on viticulture at Santa Rosa Junior College. To make rent, he took the first job he found, in a propagation nursery; also a gig in the tasting room at Topolos Winery. “I was learning about clones and rootstocks, but I didn’t have a long-term vision,” he says.

But he did have a thirst and a history of home beer-brewing. “It’s a small world up there, and when October came, I realized there was all this leftover fruit. People were giving it away; you just had to pick it. My friends and I picked over a thousand pounds, enough to make a barrel of wine. I haven’t made beer since.” Instead, he’s made more and more wine — 84 barrels in 2009, his first crush at Carruth Cellars Winery in Solana Beach. [+more]