Out of ITB, always, considering getting in, waiting?

WINE TALK
21

I concur - love your beer!

22

I don’t know. Depends. I think Andy has some sort of ITB experience in his gig. Don’t know really but anything is what you make it or what your Operating Agreement says.

23

I usually don’t disclose my full name but it’s George Burtwilliams Truchot Jayer Chadwick. I have been secretly making wines under my adopted fathers’ styles. Release date coming up.

24

Jim,

What a great question…I think that I’ve always thought that I would look to get into wine when I’m closer to retiring. I worked ITB as a Wine Director, wine buyer for retail, and I still pour for some smaller local functions. However, my primary job is Government based (after 9 years in the Army it made sense to go after a retirement) and I’ve always looked to find a job out closer to Oregon in my field of work. I know that I have a Veteran’s small business loan…and I’d love to use it toward investing in the wine community. However, my love of wine is so much I don’t want to rush-in blind and just assume things are going to work out because I’m passionate. In fact, I’m more worried that I’ll be deeply disappointed because I’ve become demanding of the wines I drink in the last 3-4 years.

I’ve often thought that when I am ready to retire I’ll move someplace and build a small wine store on property that specializes in buying wines (I want), cellaring them, and then selling them as they age. I know it’s a program that would take 5-10 years to hit a place where it would make sense…but I’m patient and if I’m retired there’s no need to make money…only to not lose it.

25

Uhhhhh…no. [snort.gif] champagne.gif

26

Jim, I’m sorry I am going to miss the chance to meet you this Sunday and try your wines. My wife and I are visiting wineries on Long Island. By chance we met a fellow berserker at a winery today, which was very cool.

I’d love to get ITB, and probably will in some capacity once I have finalized a plan to get out out of my engineering business. While I sometimes wish it was tomorrow, it may not be for another 5 to 10 years when I’ll be finished paying college tuitions.

27

Ah. Too bad. The return to Delaware. People may know I grew up in Maine but I was actually born and lived in Delaware until I was 7.

Too bad there isn’t, we’ll to my knowledge anyway, a travel plan forum. I will be in Nashville first 3 days of the week. I have occasionally been able to work out a dinner or something when I have been on the road but it would be great to have a place to tell folks. Anyway, Nashville. May 4-6.

28

In our younger years my wife and I would sort grapes and work the bottling line for a few small wineries in Woodinville, that cured me. We did make friends that we still have today though.

29

I would bail in a heartbeat if the right opportunity came up. I’m not talking about investing money but labor and passion for a livable wage, yep.

30

I am a firm believer in letting the people who know what they are doing go ahead and do it, and let me enjoy the fruits of their labor. I get offers all the time to join a group to buy grapes or start a winery or get together with a bunch of guys to contract production of a few barrels. I have never been tempted. except for that time that Francois Mauss told me that a run down second growth Bordeaux Chateau was for sale (Daleme Becker) about 8 years ago. BUT that was way out of my price range.

31

The notion of making a living doing/being involved in something you love is certainly romantic. The reality is often rather different, of course, but the romanticism of the idea remains appealing. With wine specifically, the enjoyment, for most of those here is consumption, which is a far cry from the actual work involved in producing wine. For anyone considering entering into the wine industry, it would be important to consider the actual activities that would be required on a day-to-day basis to be successful. I look at a few winery owners/winemakers I know personally, and they work their ass off for their endeavor. Even though I realize all of this, I have a strong entrepreneurial streak (own 3 businesses in addition to a corp job), so I’d have to say I would look at/seriously consider an opportunity if it came my way. Just the way I am wired…

32

I had the impression Jim was asking about people interested as investors. For me, that’s probably the least interesting way to get involved in the wine business.

-Al

33

This is an interesting thread! Many POV’s have been expressed here, many of which assume traditional business models (risking it all to learn winemaking and start a winery; Writing a multi-million dollar check to buy 50 acres of established prime vineyard; Being one of a group writing a check to be a passive investor in a winery, etc.), as well as it being and all or nothing venture. However, there are other ways to get ITB. Many require less personal wealth than you might imagine and offer more abundant opportunity to truly contribute to a winery’s success.

My wife is an Attorney while I am involved in a Beer Bar Management Software company. We are also Partners in both a winery and a restaurant. The two are very different. Our investment in the restaurant is purely financial (though we are enthusiastic pimps and offer advice when asked!) while the winery is collaborative.

We knew our Winery Partners, Ken Pahlow and Erica Landon for 10 years before joining together to expand Walter Scott. It came about based on a casual discussion over Lunch. While being ITB was always a fantasy of mine, I never seriously considered it until that evening when my wife brought up the possibility (well actually she said “we’re going to do this; figure out how!”.

As Ken and Erica’s partners in Walter Scott, we contribute where we can add value and stay out of things where we can’t. Besides investing money that helps fund the winery’s growth, we are active partners, focusing on business/finance/legal issues (skills from our “day jobs”, past and current) and let our partners focus on what they do best – making and selling wine! We help out at events, provide “unskilled labor” during harvest, serve as sounding boards and, when asked, offer wine related input. We view our role as supporting our partner’s success and that is what we strive to do.

Does that make us ITB? We think so and most treat us as such. While we don’t select vineyard sources, direct farming or make wine, we are very much involved and have significant “skin in the game”.

Circling back to Jim’s initial question, all this is to say that there are many ways to be involved ITB. Our specific situation is one among many potential ways. There are many opportunities out there: most Assistant Winemakers hope to launch their own project someday and just need a combination of financial backing, business knowledge and someone who believes in them to make it happen; established Winemakers may need help on a new project, etc.

An issue that has been expressed in different ways is concern of a wine hobby no longer being fun when you cross a line to being ITB. My experience, FWIW is that it definitely remains fun, but different.

I have learned far more about wine (at least Pinot Noir and Chardonnay) than I could have otherwise and have the opportunity to taste an even wider variety than I had before. I understand more about the business of wine and have had a variety of experiences I would not have had otherwise.

Echoing Jim again, if anyone wants to learn more about our experience moving ITB, please reach out.

34

That has also been my experience.

35

It would have been easier to do it when I was fresh out of school and didn’t have a family, but it didn’t occur to me that it would be possible until a few years ago. The cliche is that you need a large fortune to make a small one in the wine biz, but my expectations aren’t to make a fortune, just to make enough to allow me to continue to do it. I love every aspect of making wine from working in the vineyard to the cellar -it isn’t glamourous work at all. If you are willing to make no money for a few years while you learn, it is entirely possible to get into winemaking -especially if you are willing to do all of the work yourself. I didn’t have much money at all and we just released our first wine, so it can be done.

In 2010 my wife and I made the difficult decision to pack up our two small children and leave family, friends, and a great job behind to move to Germany to learn how to make Riesling. I didn’t have much money or a job lined-up or really even a commanding grasp of the language at the time, but had the confidence (or stubbornness) to believe we would figure it out. And as luck would have it, I think we did.

After spending the summer with my wife’s family and travelling around to different wine regions trying to find a good fit, we decided on the Pfalz in the southwestern corner of the country. The moment that the picturesque villages appeared against the backdrop of the Haardt mountain range and the rolling green sea of vineyards we decided to stay. This is the northern continuation of Alsace, France into Germany and for a wine-lover, one of the most beautiful places in Europe.

Travelers to Burgundy or Alsace would find the Pfalz to be very familiar. The warmer, drier weather, and the abundance of different soils make possible the growing of many different fruits and vegetables as well as many different grape varieties including of course Riesling (but also Pinot Noir, Blanc, and Gris, Gewürztraminer, Sauvignon Blanc, and many others).

I kept getting interviews for marketing positions at wineries, but what I really wanted to do was get into the dirt of the vineyard and the dank of the cellar. Finally, I found a job at a mid-sized, successful family winery and got to work. I had some theoretical knowledge of how wine was produced, having sold wine at both the retail and importer/distributor level in Minneapolis for over a decade, but I had absolutely zero idea of how to carry it out. I spent my first week on the job cleaning all of the hoses, pumps, tanks, barrels, filters, presses, tractors, plows and implements, and knowing that there was a correct way to assemble this puzzle, but where to begin? I took a very hands-on approach to learning about these things (and not without some mistakes!) because the family I worked for didn’t speak English and much of the technical vocabulary was beyond my understanding. I had a decent background in auto-mechanics from working at a repair shop in high-school, but I’m a city kid. I didn’t know how to operate a tractor. Furthermore, I couldn’t keep a houseplant alive for a few weeks, much less an entire vineyard. In the vineyards I put in long weeks working alongside Polish migrant workers who were at first skeptical as hell about this American who for some reason wanted to bust his ass for 4€/hr. None of them could speak English, I couldn’t speak Polish (still can’t except for cussing and cat-calls, which is all I learned from those guys), so we had to rely on German, which was a lot of fun as they spoke less than I did. It took many acts of daring and drinking and hard work to earn their respect, which eventually I did. I miss those guys.

As my German got better and I started getting more comfortable with my surroundings and the culture I enrolled in the Viticulture and Viniculture program at the Wine and Agricultural College in Neustadt, one of the top schools of its kind in Europe. There I learned from some of the very best doctors of plant and soil biology, chemistry, and Oenology in Germany. It wasn’t easy for me to learn these disciplines in German and I remember coming home from school exhausted from having to translate science vocabulary so quickly in my head. After a few months though, it became less laborious and it got to the point where I could make important contributions to class discussions and I had a really good time. I ended up finishing the three year program in two years, passing all of my tests from the Chamber of Agriculture and became only the second American to graduate in the 114 year history of the school. More importantly, I learned how to farm vines and make wine.

During this time, I took a job at one of the great wineries in the Pfalz to finish up my apprenticeship, Weingut Odinstal. There I learned more traditional techniques of cellar procedures and Organic and Biodynamic viticulture as a counter-balance to the conventional farming and more technology-driven cellar-work where I had started out. It was important for me to get both perspectives in order to make informed decisions about how I wanted to proceed with my own work. It was there under Andreas Schumann that I learned how to execute the philosophies that I have admired for years –namely less intervention in the cellar, and more care and hard-work in the vineyard. This is the crux of the teachings of Hans-Günter Schwarz, perhaps Germany’s greatest winemaker, who has apprenticed many of the top winemakers in Germany including Andreas. I am fortunate to have gotten to know him during my time at Odinstal and proud to be part of his winemaking-tree.

Again, we had a decision to make. We could stay in Germany and I could work for one of the many wineries in the region or throughout the Country, or we could move back to the US and apply these techniques in a place where they would be unique. I collected climatic and soil data from every major (and most minor) wine growing regions in the US and decided that Oregon’s Willamette Valley had everything we were looking for. Again we left family, friends and my wife’s Country behind. We moved to Oregon in September 2013. When we arrived, I worked at Brooks winery in Amity over the harvest and started at a vineyard management company in December of that year…where I drive a tractor almost every day.

When I started Paetra Wine Company in the spring of 2014, I was able to sign contracts for Riesling grapes that let me farm the individual blocks and rows myself, giving me more control over the quality of the fruit and ultimately of the eventual wine. Decisions made in the vineyard (should) facilitate and inform decisions made in the cellar.

Cheers,
Bill

36

Bill, your story is really inspiring. I’m looking forward to trying some of your Oregon Riesling.

37

I’ve been a small winery owner (at some level) for almost 10 years. First as a partner in a winery property, then on my own as a “Garage” operation (albeit with a Tasting Room)…

While the operation is fairly stable now, I have yet to be able to be able to take any money out at all.

I do have a nice cellar, and enjoy the business, but it is stressful, and you pretty much always will be capital starved, even if (more like especially if) you are a success, because whatever “profit” you might eke out, goes right back in to finance next years inventory… banks used to to this, but banks don’t really lend money to small businesses anymore.

The only time you can take money out in salary or otherwise (without selling out) , is when you stop producing more product each year, and you are selling all your current product.

I know plenty of folks in the business, who are multi-millionaires in product in the pipeline, but still drive 10+ old pickups like I do, and pretty much live hand to mouth…

It’s a tough business nowadays, with national distribution no longer available , and I don’t think I would recommend it to anyone who had a family, or who was not clearly on some kind of vision quest.

38

Cool story! Thanks, Bill.

39

I was just gauging where people here fell in the spectrum of things and what their perceived interest level at intersecting with the business was if any. I would suspect that most folks that wanted in at an investment level would probably keep that interest to themselves. I’m curious because there are so many ways in at smaller or greater levels of financial commitment and/or effort.

40

Al - I would totally agree with you. I know for a fact that there are generally more/better ways to invest and generate cash than being in the wine business.

There are many, many variations on the theme being discussed. Some folks like to farm, and farm only. Some like to get involved in the “craft” of making wine, but please oh please don’t make them get into marketing/selling of the wine - they don’t want to do that! Some people who “make” wine do not want to own vineyards - too costly and stressful. They want to purchase fruit and go forward from there. Some people (yours truly) prefer to go after it all, but focus on what they are good at, and get help in to do the things they can’t or don’t want to do (for a variety of reasons).

If I had to say what the single most advantageous thing about my operation is, I would have to say it is owning the vineyard. It is a point of control over cost, availability, and consistency of product, if you can live with the total lack of control Mother Nature gives you [cheers.gif].