Bernie Rooney:
Brewing up Business on the Ave

BERKELEY -- For Bernie Rooney, life and labor are inextricably intertwined.

"He's a real worker," says Sandy, his wife of 34 years and co-owner of Berkeley's Oak Barrel Winecraft, a San Pablo Avenue shop that has been selling supplies to home beer, wine and vinegar makers for 45 years. "It comes from his background -- he's worked since he was nine."

Watching Rooney fill glasses of beer for customers to sample in the brightly lit aisles, it's clear his work ethic has paid off. A mind-boggling array of malt extract, grain, hops and yeast fills bins and bottles on the shelves of the tidy shop. Flags representing the origins of various imported products -- Germany, Italy and France among them -- march in a line above soft chatter, clinking bottles and an occasionally trilling telephone. Large wooden barrels spill out onto the sidewalk. Rooney, clad in a neatly tucked shirt, belted blue jeans, hiking socks and loafers, is in his element. Business is booming and employees and customers alike say the 60-year-old is the most magnanimous man around.

"He's just as happy to spend time with someone who's going to spend thousands of dollars as with someone who is just asking a question," says employee Travis Smith, 27. "You'll see stressful conditions in here with 40 people waving things in the air…I've never once seen him lose his patience."
Rooney learned patience at an early age. Born and raised in the tiny west central Minnesota town of Alexandria, his family lived by the light of kerosene lamps until Rooney was six and it wasn't until he was 15 years old that they had running water, he said. His father worked at an ice-cream plant, his mother cut meat in a grocery store, and Rooney and his five brothers and sisters were never without a chore.

"My parents were a motivator for us," he says earnestly with a slow nod of his silver-streaked head. "And every one of us has done well."
Rooney is known as a great listener -- a skill he used to his advantage when he bought the shop ten years ago without the slightest clue how to brew anything. Up until then he'd worked in the commercial real estate industry, but when the bottom dropped out of that market in the late 1980s he went in search of a new opportunity.

"It's been one heck of a learning experience," he says, fiddling with the reading glasses in his hands. "It's pretty much work, work, work."

During the grape harvesting season, which kicks off Labor Day weekend and runs through mid-October, Rooney puts in 11 hour days six days a week. Several times a week he rises before dawn, heads north to Napa and hauls back grapes. Customers, who have their pick of 17 different kinds of grapes, can pay the shop to crush the fruit or go at it themselves at home. Oak Barrel supplies 100 tons of grapes a year to customers -- ultimately yielding 50,000 bottles of wine.

Rooney's attentive, easygoing demeanor means he knows his customers well -- which can result in even more work at the end of the day.
"They all want you to come over, taste their wine," he says. "It kind of gets out of hand."

But it's clear why more people want to know him better.

"He is very mellow, organized, precise," says employee Homer Smith, 47, an employee who collected his first paycheck from Oak Barrel at age 14. "He's just a great person to work with."

Longtime customer Paul May says Rooney is "one of the most giving people I've ever known."

"I don't make friends that last a long time often, but when I met Bernie I knew he'd be a lifelong friend and partner."