This article was published by the Lockeford Clements News on Wednesday, September 13, 2000.

Winery rebirth nearing completion
By Hannah Schardt

After over a decade in the business of cleaning up other people's messes, Karyn and Don Litchfield have decided to tackle the biggest mess of their lives and make it their own. Over the last several months, the couple has been converting a long-abandoned winery on Locke Road into an Italianate wine tasting and wine manufacturing villa.

The Vino Piazza was a deserted, often-vandalized cluster of buildings until the Litchfields bought it at an auction two years ago. Once the site of a flourishing local vintners' co-op, the land was sold to a gasohol company in the 1970s. After putting $2 million into the project, the gas company backers "skipped the country with the remaining million dollars," according to Karyn Litchfield. After that, the buildings sat abandoned until Don Litchfield, a geological engineer who specializes in environmental cleanup, and his wife bought them.

Because the land had some environmental contamination - mostly from a huge underground oil storage tank - the Litchfields were ideal buyers. Their professional knowledge was able to save them money, although the project, from clean up to renovation is proving very expensive.

Fortunately, the pair has both the experience and the gumption to take on much of the work themselves.

"Don is in charge of the development and the building," said Karyn Litchfield. "I'm more into the design- deciding what looks pretty."

It's easy to imagine that the winery, still months from completion, will indeed be very pretty. The wine tasting rooms are former wine storage tanks, acoustically impressive concrete cells which, with doorways and proper lighting, make dramatic backdrops for the local wines that will eventually be sampled there. These rooms surround a courtyard where visiting wine aficionados can gather between tastings.

The buildings themselves, all of which date from either the 1930s or the 1950s are painted warm shades of gold, green and purple, foreshadowing the Italian villa the Litchfields hope to create over the coming year.

According to Karyn Litchfield, the winery has been "inundated with interest" from local vineyards. Four of the six-to-ten wine facilities have been spoken for. Cosentino Wine of Napa, the largest of the potential tenants, has already moved hundreds of French Oak barrels into the winery in anticipation of crushing this year's crop at Vino Piazza.

Despite the couple's admitted "shoestring budget", work at the winery continues apace, with painters and construction workers swarming the place daily. The scale house, which currently doubles as the operation's business office, buzzes with activity. Tiffany Lyons-Garza, the woman who works with the couple as a secretary, helps take care of daily business with the public scale on the property. "She's so good," said Litchfield. "She's just so important to us."

With the licensing and permit processes slowly grinding on, the Litchfields hope to have the tasting rooms fully functional by spring, when wine tourism perks up.

Karyn Litchfield hopes to give the winery a boost of publicity around Halloween by constructing a haunted house within the shadowy walls of the storage tank area. Giving a ghostly cackle to demonstrate the acoustics, she said that such an event could help familiarize the local public with the winery and reintroduce the notion of a large local winery to the Lockeford area.

Until then, the Litchfields will continue their hands-on reconstruction of the winery at a pace that defies their limited funds.

"Once my husband decides to do something, there's no holding him back," said Karyn Litchfield.

This article was re-printed with the permission of the Lockeford Clements News.

Check them out at www.lcnews.iscool.net .

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