How to respond to, " My X (friend or relative) wants to get into the wine business. What do you recommend?"

I have gotten this question many times over the years but twice in the past week. My normal advice is, “Don’t. Having to earn money from it is a good way to ruin the fun.” For the last two, I said, “Well, they’ll be competing with thousands of out of work restaurant wine directors and sommeliers, some of whom actually know something about the business, so maybe an alternate career path might be more lucrative and allow them to be able to afford what they want to drink.”

But, in all seriousness, assuming that the person wants some good advice, what should I suggest?

The wine business is pretty broad - are they looking to get into winemaking, distribution, retail, restaurants, or journalism? It might help to narrow down their interests first.

As far as ‘better’ retail is concerned, here in South OC I can think of one retailer that’s been around for 30 years+and another (very small) that’s had two owners in maybe 25 years. Otherwise there are a handful approaching 5 years per owner. Given some time I could list 30-40 that never made it past 5 years. That’s not a great track record.

Just let them know to make a small fortune in wine you have to start with a large fortune.

I agree with Geoff. What part of the wine business? We know tasting room people, growers, winemakers, winery staff, somms, winery owners, distributors/reps, retailers, importers and bartenders. With the right attitude, desire, drive, direction, knowledge and initial capital a person can be very successful. Connections help. With the right schtik, you can sell wine for double the retail price to a select receptive audience.

You gave the best advice possible already. The decision is then theirs, and theirs alone.

I’ve gotten this question many times, but more directly, where the person asking is the one interested in working with wine. Usually they work in finance or something, where they get paid well but don’t enjoy the work. The first thing I tell them is that they’ll have to take a huge pay cut, probably to significantly less than half of what they make, and that if they’re ever able to get back up to the type of salary they have at their current job, which is unlikely, it will take quite a few years. That dissuades most people.

I’ve been doing this for 21 years now, and it’s taken a long time to get to where I am. The biggest thing the industry is missing is business-minded people. It’s one thing to buy a geeky wine, it’s a whole other thing to sell it, and understand the consequences that come with it being a stale item on the books (since those stale items mount up).

If they can bring a business, sales oriented mind to work, then they will get their foot in the door and rise quickly. They have to have thick skin too. Being around wine all the time has it’s benefits for sure, but there is more to it than just tasting wine.

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Median yearly salary in this country is $49,764/year, so if they make more than that in booze that is better than average pay.

If the have 2 million, it’s an easy way to have 1 million…

That’s some selective quoting to argue against something I didn’t say (in a way that doesn’t even make sense, but that’s not worth getting into).

::likebutton::

Two simple paths to “try it out” without making a big commitment (well, one of these is a bigger jump than the other, but still a temporary thing) where it is fairly easy to land the job;

  1. Part time retail work in a liquor store that has a good wine program or that is exclusively a wine shop. Preferably work on nights where they do their free tastings (thurs-fri-sat). You’ll learn a lot from talking to people about wine and just browsing the aisles while restocking/looking things up. Bonus; employee discount.
  2. Work a harvest in Napa/Sonoma/Washington. People are always looking for harvest interns. Pay is crap, hours are horrendous, work is back breaking, but you’ll learn a lot about making wine.

Pick your path depending on where your interest lies.

I actually chose path 1 and did it for quite a few years. It’s how I met my wife (she works in wholesale wine sales). At one point I seriously considered a career change. I actually applied for and was offered a job in wholesale wine sales with a company that has an amazing portfolio, but turned it down because the money just wasn’t good enough and I decided I wanted it to remain a hobby after a few years of seeing what the industry was all about. If the money had been better, I probably would have made the switch.

Yes, “Don’t” is the best advice. They need more drive than just asking a lame question. Most of the time there’s some romantic fantasy that has nothing to do with reality. Any winemaker has had countless people asking to help with harvest/crush. The vast majority balk at the start time. The vast majority of first timers who work a day never manage to be able to make another day work with their schedule or whatever.

The two path types are apprenticeship and education. The first is very low pay, hard work, long hours, plus many times as many people at that tier as will ever be able to step up to the next. And, good luck getting a job as an inexperienced harvest intern if you’re older, like over 29.

Education means debt/investment. Then, if you want to still follow your dream, you go the harvest intern route. Good luck paying down that debt, assuming you’re even getting paid. Fast track is doing southern hemisphere harvests, too, which means travel expense and possibly no pay. Others can’t afford that, taking as much off-season work to save up enough to work harvest. If you make the mistake of signing up with a bigger winery, your education will put you into the lab the entire harvest, doing the same basic stuff over and over and over, instead of getting the hands-on experience in the vineyard and winery, as you’d hoped. Joy. Get an advanced degree and you can go straight into a well paying job doing lab work. That’s about the only option to pay off your debt. It’s sort of like how few master somms work the floor.

I bet you the guys who succeeded were the ones who worked the hardest and really learned their business. Someone I know (now in his late 70s) opened a liquor store in DC a number of years ago and thought that all you had to do was sit there and people would come in a buy from him. Really did not know his merchandise - what is there to know, it all gets you drunk. He did not succeed.

My father decided in the late 50s that the way to distinguish his liquor store from others in town was to start to sell fine wine. His partner (much older) did not want to get involved with wine. A few years later, the partner died and dad could get to do what he wanted to do. He knew nothing about wine and neither did his wholesalers, etc. So, he read books and tasted. He did not know how to pronounce a lot of the famous wine names from Europe (he just read about them in wine books and wine labels), but he got to know the ones that were good and true to their type and those that were not good. He built the store into the largest wine and liquor store in my hometown and the only store at the time that had really good wine.

After I finished law school, he sold the store and retired. He agreed to work at the store for several months to teach the buyer wine and introduce him to the customers of the store - which by this time included the mayor, several other elected officials and many of the prominent doctors, lawyers, etc., in town. The buyer was more interested in setting up a computer system for the store (this was early 1980s) than in learning wine. As I understand it, he lost about 1/3 of dad’s business, then sold the store to someone else who lost about 1/3 and then the store closed down.

So, to me, the real question is how much does he want to dedicate himself to learning the business? How many hours a day does the person want to work. My guess is that virtually everyone on this board who has made a success in the wine business has worked extremely hard to get there.

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Jay - What is your response when they say “My friend X wants to become a lawyer. What do you recommend?”

Tell them to run away like the room is on fire.

I asked this very question of this community, for myself, about a year and a half ago: Getting into the business: finding good harvest internships - Cellar Rats (ITB) - WineBerserkers

I got a lot of really good advice from a lot of people - very practical, no-nonsense, but not discouraging, which I really appreciated. I ended up getting a harvest internship at Williams Selyem, which was a fantastic experience, and transitioning into a wine lab after that, which has worked out really well for me and I expect will remain a good fit for some time.

I’m sure there are important differences between wanting to go into production vs. winery sales/marketing vs. retail. And then I know some people try to just start their own winery or vineyard from scratch with no experience - I just hope they have a lot of money to burn.

If someone says that they or their friend/family member is interested in getting into the production side of the business, my number one recommendation would be for them to talk to a few people who’ve worked harvest and then, after hearing about the hours (for the first half of harvest at WS I worked ~5am-6pm six days a week, for the second half I worked ~2pm-3am, and I know some people work much longer hours than that), the toll on your body, the lack of time with your family, and in most places the low pay and lack of benefits…well, if after that they’re still interested, they should work a harvest, especially if they have a job that would allow them to take 2-3 months off and then come back. Then if they enjoy the harvest and don’t mind living on very little income, they can try to stick around.

Then there’s also the generic advice for people who are thinking of changing careers: make sure you have enough money saved up for everything to go wrong; make sure you have a backup plan if you can’t find any penetration in your new endeavors; and make sure you have people around you to provide emotional and, if necessary, logistical support.

I don’t think that the wine industry is nearly as sexy and enticing as people outside it think it is, but it has its moments, and you get to live and work in pretty awesome parts of the world. When I get off work, drive 5 minutes to Shiloh Ranch, hike 15 minutes up to the top and drink a cold beer looking out over the Russian River Valley, I’m pretty grateful that wine brought me out here to work on something I love.

This x1000.

I might suggest they find a real job. There aren’t all that many good wine jobs. Just have them talk to wine reps who don’t make much and often work their tails off. Maybe be a gigolo for a rich collector and offer to maintain their large collection. Not being snarky, well maybe a little, Yes there are big investors who do make money in something else and buy into the wine business so they can produce mediocre high dollar Cabernets. Movies make it seem like it is really cool to be a somm so you can be snotty and hold out over the the rubes. The programs are difficult and can be expensive it is buying high-end wines in order to study and rarely seem to like the wines,Then is the testing process which is the culmination of horror known only to those who volunteer for the privilege of being tortured for several days to take exams. you may forget everything you learned in all this when it mattered, So, you do great and get more and more special papers.
this gives you certificates that tell you that you know everything about wine and know which white Loire matches lamb-sausage cassoulet. Isn’t this what we trained for. Then you do a job search. OhOh, no jobs (Covaid19), now what. Southern-Glazer wants to know if you like Arkansas ?
This the reality of wine business and COVID ia making work harder and less lucrative. My 2 cents. I think I got a bit off topic



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