It’s their business to turn wine storage into an art form

Larry Turner, co-owner of Native Wine Rocks, holds a stone spice rack at his workshop Tuesday, August 26, 2014. The business takes natural stone from the Southwest and Pacific Northwest and creates functional art.

Native Wine Rocks

Stone wine holders are displayed at Larry Turner's Native Wine Rocks workshop Tuesday, August 26, 2014. The business takes natural stone from the Southwest and Pacific Northwest and creates functional art. Launch slideshow »

In 2010, a friend of Larry Turner’s asked him to re-create a work of art — a piece of sanded and polished stone with a hole drilled through its center, just big enough to balance a wine bottle. When Turner saw the piece, he thought, “I can do better.”

Turner, now 67, went to his Texas yard and selected a heavy piece of what he calls “mossy round,” a chocolate brown rock on which thin layers of alpine green moss grow. The piece was a remnant of his house that had been destroyed in a 2008 tornado. He also had the tool he needed, a water-powered cement drill with a 3-inch bit, from years working as a pneumatic tubing contractor. He made those space-age looking tubes that transfer cash from cashiers’ cages to casino vaults.

Turner paired tool to rock and started drilling. When he finished the project, he called his son, who lives in Oregon and who’d been his handyman partner in the tubing business for more than a decade. Thus, the idea for Native Wine Rocks, a father-son business specializing in functional stone art pieces, was born.

“Our idea was to use stone, but instead of sanding it and polishing it, we’d keep it natural,” said Troy Turner, 42. “That’s the real beauty, with the roughness and colors Mother Nature gives it.”

The father-son team builds wine rocks — wine racks made of stone — in shops in their backyards. Larry Turner’s shop is in his Summerlin garage; he relocated to Las Vegas in 2011. Troy Turner’s is at the Troutdale, Ore., lavender and blueberry farm he maintains. For now, they don’t have a brick-and-mortar store; their sales come from word-of-mouth, their website, and touring wine and art festivals.

They travel to festivals up and down the West Coast — Sonoma and Napa valleys in California, as well as Oregon and Washington. During the busy season of summer and fall, they can set up four shows a month, collectively lugging about 80 pieces and 2,400 pounds of rock for each display. Most sales take place in Oregon, the land of 545 wineries, according to a 2012 study by Southern Oregon University. Wine rocks range in price from $60 to $200, and prices rise with the number of bottles the pieces are designed to hold.

Larry Turner mostly builds pieces and drives them up to Troy when he needs to restock or brings them to festivals. But he does have a small Las Vegas Valley following that he plans to grow. Starting Saturday, he’ll have a booth in Tivoli Village’s weekly Fresh52 Farmers & Artisan Market.

Fred Williams is a Las Vegas wine connoisseur with an 800-bottle collection. He's the former president of the West Las Vegas chapter of the American Wine Society and founder of Williams Wine Tastings, a small business that hosts tastings for small and large groups. He has two wine rocks, one two-hole and one with three, that he displays on the tables of his tasting events.

“I've got wooden racks at my home that hold over 800 bottles and nobody cares,” Williams said. “But when they see these two and three-bottle stones, all of a sudden it’s a showcase.”

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Wine rocks’ stone bases come in a variety of colors, textures and types. The Turners refer to them by the names given by the landscape stores and quarries that supply them. Other pieces come as a result of their own adventurous spirits and geological research, taken from public lands, permit-permitting.

A Turner favorite is Zebra Stone, a sparkling blend of cloud-white quartz and deep black metamorphic rock, a shade darker than hot asphalt. It comes in several varieties found in Oregon and Idaho, with rocks aged 500 million years or more.

The Nevada Rainbow, thin layers of shimmering meta-quartzite with colors ranging from dusty, sun-licked gold to wine-stained-lip red, comes from Las Vegas Rock’s Rainbow Quarry outside Goodsprings. The unique mineral is found nowhere else in the world and has a rich Las Vegas history. It was used in 80,000 square feet of the Aria, throughout the spa of the Delano (formerly The Hotel), at UNLV and in many other structures around town.

Las Vegas Rock Vice President of Development Justin Lindblad works with Larry Turner, selling him leftovers of giant rock projects for about 18 cents a pound. Turner gave Linblad a four-bottle piece as a thank you for cutting him a good deal. Linblad proudly displays it in his living room.

“I love it. It’s a byproduct of all the larger projects we do; it reminds me of all of them. It’s something so small but so unique,” Linblad said.

Other base stones are serpentines, micas, limestones and basalts from Idaho, California, Utah and even Mexico. Serpentines range in color from apple green to ash gray. Micas are soft and reflective, looking like a compacted pile of gold and glass shavings, clear, white and yellow films. Limestones are buttercream white; basalts are volcanic black. Mexican driftwood, a combination of quartz and limestone formed beneath the ocean, comes in sandy-colored sharp sheets, giving it a profile like baked phyllo dough.

Since Native Wine Rocks’ formation, the Turners have expanded their collection of pieces beyond single-bottle holders. Troy Turner works with big columns of rock — his largest piece holds 16 wine bottles and stands higher than 6 feet. Native Wine Rocks creates spice racks, candleholders, towel racks and fountains. Some pieces contain a small LED light under a ledge of plexiglass that makes wine bottles, and sometimes the rocks themselves, glow. Larry Turner recently sold a light-rock made of pink quartz that radiated rose colors.

Troy Turner has even built an urn rock. The family of the young man who passed chose the rock because it came from a trail they all hiked together.

“It becomes very personal,” Troy Turner said. “People love nature and what the Earth brings them in their lives. These pieces make it possible to bring the nature they love into their homes, as a piece of functional art.”

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