FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Sam Folsom

Welles Folsom & Associates

(415) 399-1138

PASO ROBLES, Calif. (Oct. 3, 2001) - Rabbit Ridge Winery has broken ground on a new winemaking facility in Paso Robles, where owner and winemaker Erich Russell resides and owns extensive vineyards.   Russell is moving his principal winemaking operations from Sonoma County to Paso Robles, although he will maintain his warehouse and a tasting room in Healdsburg.   The move will take place upon completion of construction in time for the harvest of 2002.

The new winery seven miles northwest of Paso Robles in San Luis Obispo County will be a 50,000 square foot, gravity-flow facility with capacity for 400,000 cases of wine production.   Built into a hillside off San Marcos Road, the new Rabbit Ridge Winery will be a Tuscan-Mediterranean style building with state-of-the-art equipment, including sophisticated computer monitoring of the winemaking systems.

"I'm delighted to begin construction on this new winery, as it was designed to include everything I had always wanted in a facility as a winemaker," said Russell.   "Paso Robles is a world-class wine region, we already have some outstanding vineyards here and the new winery will give us everything we need to make the best possible wine and to continue the strong growth of the Rabbit Ridge brand."

Attracted to the ideal grape growing climate and soils in this region west of Paso Robles, Erich Russell moved here in 1996.   Although he maintained his Rabbit Ridge Winery in Healdsburg, Russell began planting grapes in Paso Robles in 1997 in the Templeton Gap area, a steep, hilly region with favorable limestone soils and a maritime cooling influence that keeps it 10 to 15 degrees cooler than the town of Paso Robles to the east.   To date, Russell has planted 240 acres in Paso Robles, all in an unusual one- by two-meter spacing that has a dense 2000 vines per acre.   The vineyards include Zinfandel, Primitivo, Petite Sirah, Sangiovese, Syrah and Barbera.

In accordance with local development requirements, Russell has donated 21 acres of land to a kit fox preserve.   In addition, he had to obtain a permit to remove oak trees on his land to build the winery.   Russell is planting four oak trees for every one taken out as part of the construction.   In addition to maintaining a tasting room and warehouse in Sonoma County, Russell will continue to crush Zinfandel, Sangiovese and Barbera from Sonoma County vineyards and Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from the Stagecoach Vineyard in the Napa Valley.   The old Rabbit Ridge Winery on Westside Road in Healdsburg is currently for sale.

"We will still offer our best Rabbit Ridge wines from Sonoma and Napa," Russell noted. "We'll just be crushing the grapes in Paso Robles instead of Healdsburg. We're used to hauling grapes from other regions to the winery." When the wines were made in Healdsburg, grapes were hauled to the winery from regions all over California.