Artisan Profile –Pedro Meza, fine furniture maker
Three hundred miles south of Napa in the Central Coast town of Santa Maria resides one of our most talented and personable furniture artisans – Pedro Meza. Pedro came to the wine barrel furniture profession in a curious way. At the time he was in charge of wine barrel management for the large winery facilities of Beringer Winery. The time had come for Beringer to switch over to some larger style barrels as well as stainless tanks and they needed to “dispose” of several thousand oak wine barrels.
Over the course of several week-ends he managed to sell a few hundred half-barrels as garden planters from underneath the highway 101 freeway. He ended up selling the used barrels to other wineries and finally managed to get rid of the excess stock.
All the while Pedro was taking the barrels apart to see what else he could make. He started using the staves to create candleholders, wine racks and chairs. His week-end hobby soon turned into a full-time occupation as he decided to leave Beringer and focus full-time on creating fine wine barrel furniture. Today Pedro is one of the largest wine barrel brokers on the Central Coast and sells barrels as far away as Europe.
