Ross Rizzo, president and master vintner at Bernardo Winery, is part of the third generation of the Rizzo family who have operated the winery for nearly 100 years.

Over the years Rizzo has worked with his sisters, Selena Roberts, who is general manager of the winery, and Samantha Nawrocki, the marketing director, to create a winery experience unique to San Diego, a “new era” as Rizzo calls it.

The new era at the Rancho Bernardo winery highlights wines made from grape varietals that thrive in San Diego to pair with upscale Italian food. All this is tied together with events like its annual Spring Arts and Crafts Fair that showcases the talent of local artists and vendors.

This year the 46th annual fair is on Mother’s Day weekend, May 13-14, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event, which has free admission and parking, will feature over 100 vendors, all handpicked and selling their handmade wares.

“We have a full jury that reviews before they’re allowed to join,” Rizzo said. “There’s a waitlist and a lot of people just continue to do it every year and they do it until they retire or they pass away. And then we have to jury the next people in, so it’s a really nice, prestigious fair.”

Outside bars are located throughout the winery for the event along with grab-and-go Italian food from the Kitchen restaurant and an international food court. Admission is free. The event is family friendly with non-alcoholic beverages also available for sale, Rizzo said.

Among the vendors at the arts and crafts fair are the Village Shops, which are open year-round. Several art studios within these shops are run by artists who sell their clay, paint and mosaic creations.

Rizzo said his father wanted to have a diverse representation of artists so the winery would be a destination for multiple artists working in different mediums. The art studios, home goods shop, coffee shop and retail shops, all locally owned and operated, are open at varying times during regular business hours at Bernardo Winery.

Currently, 16 wines are available at the winery’s tasting room, and the list gets rotated as wines sell out. Being a boutique winery that produces only 6,500 cases a year of varying amounts among the wines, certain batches sell faster than others.

“It rotates pretty fast, it’ll change probably five, six, times a year,” Rizzo said.

That isn’t how Bernardo Winery always operated. In fact, Rizzo said the winery in recent years entered its new era of business. In 1889, when the winery was first created, production was usually around 100,000 cases a year. Rizzo’s grandfather, Vincent Rizzo, ran one of the only commercial wineries of that scale and would distribute wine to San Diego, Los Angeles and Tijuana.

In the 1960s the general taste profile of wines Americans liked changed from sweet, fortified wines, to fine wines with a more clean and fruity flavor. Bernardo Winery didn’t change their style during this time, but pivoted to offering shops on the property, Rizzo said.

During this time the shops were popular but the wine was not, and production went down.

The early 2000s brought another era for the winery, with more focus on the quality of wine. Herman Selarno, a winemaker and friend of Rizzo’s father, Ross Rizzo Sr., came in for a time as a winemaker and reignited the family’s passion for wine. This started the evolution of Bernardo Winery into what it is today, Ross Rizzo said.

“The new restaurant and the synergistic food and beverage experience here between the restaurant and tasting room and gelato shop and coffee shop, started in 2018,” he said. “Now, we have more of a split and specialized service that’s way more traditional to being a California winery.”

Wine tasting, flights, glasses and bottles are all offered in the winery’s tasting room. From there the wine can be enjoyed anywhere on the property along with high-end Italian food made from scratch.

Bernardo Winery offers private events with catering — anything from weddings and anniversaries to corporate and business events. Also offered throughout the year are pasta demonstrations and classes, winery tours, paint and sip classes, and the annual arts and crafts fair.

Perks for members of the wine club at Bernardo Winery, which just started last year, include meet-the-winemaker events and pre-release tastings. Others include a shipment of three wine bottles every quarter, discounts on wine and food as well as an allotment of eight free tastings, flights or glasses of wine per quarter.

“It’s just uber popular,” Rizzo said. “We actually have a cap right now of 250 members, we like to say ‘the country club number.’ It’s not capped yet, but it’s getting very close to the cap.”

Bernardo Winery uses grapes from wineries it manages or are bought from local vineyards. This includes about 20 vineyards in San Diego County all within a quick drive.

“We like to say that if we have to drive more than 20 minutes to get to a vineyard we don’t take care of it,” Rizzo said.

Because the flavor of the wine is determined by the grape varietals used, and different varietals grow better in different regions, the wine available at Bernardo Winery is specific to the San Diego environment.

San Diego has a similar climate to Sicily and Rome, so Bernardo Winery will grow varietals like syrahs and viognier, but steer away from others that won’t perform as well, like cabernet sauvignons.

“That’s what we’re trying to teach in the tasting rooms,” Rizzo said. “That you’re tasting what San Diego has to offer. And to be open minded and to put away that preconceived notion that chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, are the only grape varietals and that those are the only things that you’re going to drink.”