Question for those ITB - what made you pursue a career in wine?

WINE TALK
1

Curious to hear from the group.
When did your wine obsession cross the line from hobby to something you wanted to pursue as a career? This question is mainly for those who didn’t grow up in a family wine business or already have some connection to the industry.
Was there a specific moment where you thought, “I should actually be doing this for work,” whether that meant hospitality, Sommelier, retail, importing, distribution, or buying a winery/vineyard.

Also interested in hearing from those who didn’t make the jump. Did you consciously decide to keep wine as a passion instead of a profession? Sometimes too much exposure can ruin your passion and love for a hobby.
Would love to hear how people knew it was the right time to take the leap into the world of the wine industry.

1 Like
2

I have more recently made the jump. Once upon a time I was in college studying computer science, had to leave to get some serious surgeries done. After a few years of medical issues when It was time to get back on my feet, the idea of spending the rest of my life behind a desk weighed on me. I was getting really into whiskey and got a job at total wine keep me busy. I fell DEEP down the wine rabbit hole. TW does a pretty good job at educating their employees, I felt like I got a WSET 1 education for free(and then some). I noticed that I was was significantly more interested in the wine and the wine education than the other employees in my district. That was the first light bulb that went off that made me realize maybe I should consider this industry as a career. Fast forward 3 years and I am currently managing a tasting room, halfway through a winemaking certificate program(UC Davis), and have made 3 barrels of wine.

I could not be more happy in this industry. 99% of people who work in wine love wine, and love their job. It is intoxicating to be around people who actually want to be at work, as opposed to the normal 9-5 drag most people experience. You cant put a price on happiness,

23 Likes
3

I went the other way around. I needed a job after college and got a job in a large wine store in NY. I knew nothing about wine but learned while working there and fell in love with it. But I also learned pretty quickly retail wasn’t for me. I wanted to learn to make wine so moved from NY to Oregon but my limited connections fell through. I also debated working for a distributor, but I ended up doing other things. I’m glad I got out of the business since it’s a tough gig no matter what part of it you’re in. Yes, I was passionate about it, but I think I’m happier and more financially secure doing other things.

5 Likes
4

I am one who didn’t make the jump. I was working for the university where I got my degree and also working at a local winery. I already had an interest in wine and made a few batches of wine when I started working at the winery. I started investigating options without first discussion them with my girlfriend. When she found out, she informed me that I was free to do what I wanted but I would be doing it alone. Been married 30 years now and have had my own little home vineyard for the last 20.

7 Likes
5

Sounds like the dream. Where’s the vineyard and home located?

1 Like
6

Committed to wine full time almost 20 years ago after trying my hand at multiple corporate tracks. I first owned a wine bar, and transitioned that to my import and brokerage company I have now. There are many aspects of the job that I love (the travel, the stories, the friends I have made), but one thing I struggle with is the personal commoditization of a category that I used to have unconditional love for. It definitely jaded me a bit, especially regarding wine and the respective “values” of bottles. The upside still well outweighs the down, however, and I feel lucky to have landed where I am.

6 Likes
7

Maryland, south of DC

1 Like
8

being in the industry has completely opened my eyes to the economics of wine. There are so many $100ish cabs that I used to love and worship, now they mostly frustrate me

9

I needed a job when I was in my early 20s, and a job in a fine wine shop came open; can’t say I planned it at all.

Now I’ve been in the business pretty much all my life I feel very fortunate. As an importer I travel in Italy for work, I deal with a range of really interesting people; I very much enjoy it. Being in retail is typically a good way to start out and learn something of the business.

Studying in the WSET or similar is very important, and learning how to taste properly is absolutely crucial (a lot of people don’t take the trouble). Start or join a tasting group.

Anyone who’s curious can PM me for a chat.

4 Likes
10

At age 19 I was planning a career with CalFire. I met John Scharffenberger during a control burn at his place and he offered me a job helping with harvest. I stayed on for the winter and spring and went back to firefighting next summer. I went back and forth for two years and finally decided farming was my calling. John taught be the ins and outs of land stewardship. I pounded stakes, planted you name it. It came to me naturally as most all farming is observation and common sense. I went to the 4 days Davis short course and realized I knew more than I thought.
After a dozen years of growing grapes…and learning some hard lessons along the way, some winemaker friends convinced me to make a barrel of wine in my shop. 3-4 harvests later John and I founded our own brand. We used custom crush services nearby. First vintage was '95. Now I had to learn two more trades…finer winemaking and sales, while still running 84 acres of vines.
By about 2000 my wines were finally respectable enough but we weren’t making headway in the market. I did ride-alongs with young sales people who didn’t care how hard I worked. I also learned even more about the finer points of viticulture as I made wine. We ran out of time and sold our inventory after the 2007 harvest. We gave it a hellova effort.
I left Eaglepoint after the 2011 after 32 years. It was time to reinvent myself at age 50. Luckily a great position opened for me in Anderson Valley. It didn’t hurt that most folks knew me in Mendocino county.
From farming a climate like the southern Rhone, I was off to the Burgundy of CA. I inherited a totally new crew, property and problems. The property was really a mess. Long story short after about 6-7 years I had it turned around. I did 13 harvests in AV before I couldn’t do it anymore.
I met a bunch of very talented and crazy people in my travels. I’d say the most common theme is a very high percentage of folks in ALL facets of the wine biz do it for the love of wine. Most folks don’t make tons of money growing grapes or making wine. The sales folks on the ground don’t either. Obviously I’m proud of my accomplishments and have very few regrets.

25 Likes
11

I first got seriously interested in wine when I was very young - 19 - and living in England which, especially at the time (2008), wasn’t a place where wine production seemed like a career. My interests were in the science of the physical world and so I went into geology. In 2012, living in Boston and in the doldrums of grad school, I considered leaving and applying to the UC Davis Master’s program in Viticulture and Enology. But I didn’t have the guts, or the money, and sticking with geology felt like the right decision at the time.

In January of 2019, I was a few years out of my PhD, working in DC, and feeling unmoved by most of the career options ahead of me. My interest in wine had only intensified, and now I was reading wine chemistry papers for kicks. One day my now-wife and I were walking down the streets and I said something along the lines of “I want to work with my hands and on my feet, I like plants and growing things, I want to create something, I want to do something where I can satisfy my scientific interests, and I really love wine…I wish I could just work in winemaking.” And she looked at me and basically said “why can’t you?”

That was when I found Wine Berserkers - which has been awesome for so many, mostly non-professional, reasons. But I posted in the ITB forum asking about getting into wine production and received a lot of great guidance. @John_Oglesby was particularly generous with his time and advice, even helping me vet individual internship postings.

The cellarmaster at Williams Selyem took a real gamble on me ("I’m moving across the country to join the wine industry but I promise you I am serious about it) and brought me in 2 months before the other harvest interns to get me trained up. After working in the cellar there, I worked in a couple large wine labs, took an R&D gig running labs and product development for a non-alcoholic wine company, and then got my current job, which is just about the best-case scenario I could have imagined when I started this journey 7 years ago.

I notice in the original post that the work options listed are all either sales jobs or buying a winery. May I humbly recommend against doing the latter.

14 Likes
12

I grew up in the business as my Dad owned a number of retail Liquor stores while I was in HS and College. Upon graduating College, I joined him in opening another location. I wasn’t very interested in wine, but knew I needed to learn more about it if I was going to make a career in the industry. I took classes that a local distributor offered and during one class they served a 1970 Ch La Lagune (this was 1987). This was my epiphany bottle which sparked my passion for wine. I stayed in retail for about 6 more years before moving over to the Wholesale side of the business. I’ve worked for two different fine wine oriented distributors in CT for the past 32 years. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have a career focused around something that I truly love.

10 Likes
13

Went to music school, which means I worked in restaurants on the side. By the end of my degree, I realized that a) jazz is dead b) I didn’t want to teach OR endlessly hustle for grants and c) I wasn’t really good enough to make a true go of it.

I worked in progressively better and better restaurants with better and better wine lists after school, and then had a flashbulb moment with a bottle of red Burgundy that really made me go all-in on the wine world. Absolutely loved how much there was to dig into - not unlike music - and the intersection of geology, chemistry, culture, and economics was fascinating. Plus, people actually drank wine, which was cool.

Eventually got to the point of being wine director/head somm at a couple of Toronto’s best restaurants, but as I hit my early 30s and met my now-wife the grind was catching up with me. A sales rep job opened up at a small importer I had worked with extensively during my time putting lists together so I made the jump, and then made another move a year and a half later to a larger agency where I’m now running private client sales and helping with portfolio management. I love it; it both keeps one foot in the hospitality world vis a vis chatting wine with people, doing events, etc and I also get to shape the direction of our company and book.

Maybe it’s because I did more than a decade of 12-hour shifts and late nights, but even on the worst days I still get to exclusively deal with wine for a living and work with some of the best producers in the world. No day is the same, and there’s always a new opportunity/producer/cuvée to discover. I spend a lot of my free time thinking about, reading about, and drinking wine which is probably a good sign.

I still do some moonlighting somm gigs at both a fine dining restaurant and our local sports arena to keep the hospitality juice flowing and to see what people are drinking/not get too divorced from the real world.

13 Likes
14

I caught the wine bug while living in Los Angeles from a friend who brought over some nice wines to a Thanksgiving dinner I hosted. Though I grew up in the Willamette Valley, our farm/forest area was predominantly about farming berries and trees.

I was a bartender in LA, but moving back to Oregon (Portland) I made the jump to nicer restaurants with good wine lists and continued to learn as much as I could about wine and then moved into buying wine for one of the best restaurants in Portland. About the age of 33, I realized that I was coming to the close of my restaurant career (I didn’t want to own one and I wanted to move my career to an asset/salary combination).

Wine had remained fascinating to me over a long period of time at this point and I wanted to see what production was like, rather than just tasting. It was also, because of the Oregon community’s collegial attitude, something I could transition into without having to go back to school. With all of the small wineries it was easy to find places to help out and learn, and I traded time and effort for information and experience. And then traded labor for space and use of equipment to make 189 cases in 2002. From there, it’s pretty straightforward. You either sort it out or you get sorted out. I was mostly to stubborn to quit.

Edit: “to stubborn to quit” mostly refers to the financial side, and growing a winery without significant investment. The actual work is very challenging but one of the more magical aspects of the natural world. I don’t think there’s ever been a minute of harvest where I wished I wasn’t there (though a multitude of moments where I wished I could go home for the evening and come back to finish up the next day).

19 Likes
15

My maternal grandfather was not only a fish monger. he was a bootlegger.
My father allowed me to sample German Rieslings and Sauterne in my early teens
I returned to CA in the late 70s and to the wine biz where I first had a part time college job in the mid 60s. I managed a three store wine group in Marin County and SF
Everything changed when I entered the world of selling the finest and rarest wines from Europe and CA. I had a lot to learn, I studied intensely for years. My cohort and I at the Marin Wine Cellar recognized we needed to have first hand experience when selling great wines to sophisticated buyers with large amounts of discretionary funds. And so we did, on a grand scale. My first great bottle was 67 YQ and I was launched into a dream career in 1982.
We sold DRC, Leroy, Jayer, Dujac, Ramonet, Leflaive, etc. We also acquired a jaw dropping inventory of immaculately stored Bordeaux FG and Second Growths going back to the 40s, air freighting all our purchases from Europe. I have never met another person who has opened a banded case of 1945 Mouton which also had early security devices
As our reputation grew, so did our elite customer base. Our catalogs were mind blowing. NYC retailers stopped by during their trips to Napa and Sonoma to see if we were for real.
It was the opportunity to work with people interested in pursuing the very best that reinforced we were on the right track. Pre-internet when they found us with their dream wines all in one place they went whale on us. Our relationships changed as we enhanced their meals and lives.
I still have clients turned friends from 40+ years ago. On this New Years Eve, I received a photo in a restaurant of a bottle of 1990 Leroy Vosne Romanee Beaux Monts. I sold this gent many cases of the best and he is consuming the treasures I sold him gleefully. He also opens them at local tasting groups’ events where tasters marvel at the wines he shares. We speak several times a month, mostly non-vinous topics and visit each other yearly
In retrospect, getting to know our clientele was the most satisfying aspect of my career (along with drinking many of the best of the best).
Wine opened doors into rarified worlds such as hanging with a billionaire for two weeks in his country with his family which included the daughter of a former president. I am hard pressed to think of another career opportunity which would do so. We sold to some well known individuals. One day, the White House curator called us for a rarity in inventory.
Although almost retired, I keep a hand in the biz after 59 years and am motivated by feedback and the hunt for requested wines. The dream continues.

12 Likes
16

This resonates very strongly for me. And I often wrestle with the fact that if I were to put the amount of time and energy I want to put into my work, I would ruin other equally or more important aspects of my life. I think the fact that I struggle with that is a positive sign that I am working in a career that I love, and I am fortunate to have a partner, friends, and even colleagues who can help pull me out by the legs when I get too deep down the rabbit hole.

3 Likes
17

In 1961, at 14 years of age, I learned that I liked Louis Martini Mountain Red better than Ronrico or Lowenbrau.

At 16, on a Volkswagen bus trip from DC to Mexico, we stopped at a classic New Orleans restaurant. I ordered a bottle of wine and earned the respect of the waiter when I stubbed out my cigarette and had a swig of water before tasting the wine.

I started college that fall and during the Monday night poker game, a guy won a pot, threw a dollar at the guy old enough to buy and said “next week buy the gallon of Gallo Zinfandel instead of the Gallo Burgundy, it’s a buck more and worth it.” I paid attention to the ‘Burgundy’ in my glass, then a week later to the Zinfandel… big light bulb goes on.

The next spring, I tried LSD and tasted food for the first time. I had already dropped out of college, a friend taught me to cook and I started working in restaurants. In 1980 my son turned 3 and I had a choice: Buy a restaurant and live there, or change jobs. I got a retail wine job. Worked two years retail, then took a job with a start-up fine wine wholesaler. Three years later, they were bought out by a big old liquor house.
They offered me a job… salary, bonus, paid vacation, health insurance, car. I was ready to accept, then they showed me my schedule. Monday 9AM this account, 10AM this store, 11AM this other store. Take one of your customers to lunch, then here’s your 1, 2, 3, 4PM appointments. I would have had as much flexibility as driving a Budweiser truck.

I declined and 1/1/1985 started my own import business, Hand Picked Selections. I took out a 2nd mortgage for $20K and borrowed $20K from my parents. I had $40K to live on and run the business for a year.
At the end of 1985 I had paid off the $40K.
My best day in the business was 12/26/85. I did the books and realized I could pay the warehouse where I rented space to unload the containers, instead of doing it myself by hand (at that time I was bringing in 800 cases at a time, floor-loaded).

Fast-forward to 1/1/22. I sold the business, which had 12 employees and was selling over 100,000 cases a year in 40 states. The principal buyer was my #2 who had worked for me 12 years, in partnership with 2 of our suppliers and another American in the trade.

I fully understand how incredibly lucky I was. From the time I started the business until the time I sold, 37 years, wine consumption in the U.S. increased by ~2-3% a year per capita.

Regrets? I imported a lot of cool, fine wines that nobody bought, so I closed out a lot of wine and made much less money than I could have. If I had played it safe and bought to meet demand, I would have sold the business for a lot more. But that’s not really a regret. I traveled to places and tasted wines that I would only regret if I was poverty-stricken, which I am not.

Satisfaction? Yes, thank you universe.

16 Likes
18

To meet girls.

Actually, I got out of the service in 1976 and went back to working in a liquor store (I had worked at one in high school). I took a liking to wine while stationed in Germany, and my boss seemed to think I knew what I was talking about. So he came to me and asked me to watch over the wine department and order the wines (the first wine I ordered was the Freixenet Brut from Spain - I thought it was in the coolest black bottle!).

So there was this big wine tasting put on by this large wine distributor at this fancy hotel in town, and my boss asked me to go. Let’s just say it totally blew me away. All the women behind the tables were gorgeous and seemed super smart to me. I fell in love with the industry right there.

I started going to every trade show and eventually thought I knew something about wines. The turning point was; I was working late one Saturday night and I and some of the crew snuck downstairs to smoke a joint of all things. Well, we were in a building built in 1912, and one of the crew leaned against a wall, and his hand pushed threw the wall, creating a hole in the wall. We looked inside and there was a bunch of those old tall 1.5ml Chianti bottles and about 6-8 wooden cases of wine. We crawled through the hole and there were cases of 375ml half bottles of old Burgundy and Bordeaux from 1949-1952. 4-5 classified growths and a bunch of grower Burgundies imported by B&G (I don’t remember the names of the estates - just the B&G label on the bottom of the bottles). I told my boss about our find the following Monday morning, and he said I could buy all I want for $1.00 a bottle (this was 1977). So I used to grab a beer 6pk carrier and grab 6 bottles at a time for the week, or to take to a party. That’s when I got serious. Drinking 1952 Beycheville (I remember it was pure magic) and 1949 Latricieres Chambertin I caught the bug. I spent hours and hours drinking those wines and reading the old wine books. I remember bringing 6pks to parties and everyone is drinking cheap beer and I’m drinking 1952 Gruaud Larose.

I eventually went to the largest Liquor warehouse operation in the state (Minnesota) and before I was 24 years old was the head buyer for the 40 store chain. I really thought I knew everything about wine, I was a cocky asshole for sure by then (embarrassing to think about today). But because of my position was given trips to California and European wine countries and eventually developed a working knowledge of wine.

The rest is history.

14 Likes
19

This is a really great thread.

7 Likes
20

Quick answer. Lack of self-esteem.

In the mid 90’s some college friends and I - mid 20’s - decided we should “know something about wine.” So we had a series of themed brown bag tastings. We had tasting sheets and ranked the wines and tried to discuss them. After a few events really only one guy (worked at Goldman and now of all things a gynecologist) really started to get into it. For the rest it was casual knowledge and an excuse to hang with friends. Eventually we stopped the tastings.

Through this I was working on my doctorate in French post-structuralism and German critical theory (with a concentration in American pragmatism, hah). As I was not funded, I worked full-time in management consulting as support staff (NYC office manager, some onsite project work, etc.). At work dinners learned a little more about wine. At this juncture I had a small 2-3 case collection and eventually moved it out from under my East Village studio bed into storage at Chelsea Storage.

Fast forward a bit and I highly inadvisably quit management consulting to work full-time on my dissertation (on Michel Serres for the two people who might have heard of him). Naturally I kept spending money as if I had a full-time job. Eventually I (a) was going nuts trying to write seven days a week and (b) needed money.

So I got a part-time job at Chelsea Wine Vault in the Chelsea Market. Important to note that at this juncture both lines of business were highly respectable with no funny business. There I learned a lot. And spent the majority of my salary on wine. When faced with having to take out an enormous loan to finish my doctoral dissertation I said no way and quit. By that juncture I was incredibly turned off by the prospect of becoming a professor (not that there were any prospects although I was published and had given papers at major conferences in my field). The academy seemed like the antithesis of freedom of thought. This is the early oughts.

The retail salary, part-time or full-time, was not going to cut it. Even though I enjoyed being around wine. Less so retail work. So I went back to management consulting. After some time I left that and worked at Chambers Street Wines and a wine storage startup (which it turns out was owned by two venal mofos, ask Andre Hueston Mack). Worked some with Crush at this juncture. Back to corporate.

Around 2007 I went to manage Chelsea Wine Storage (where I was still a client, just now with a shit ton of wine). Due to extreme differences with ownership and business direction decided to wash myself of it all and move to Charlotte. This is where the full break to wine occurred. Worked in retail in Charlotte and eventually managed a hybrid wine store/wine bar. In 2012 got tired of Charlotte and missed family and moved back north to New Jersey. Worked for an extremely large, high volume retailer for a year but that was insanely draining. Luckily got a job as the warehouse manager for the new Wally’s Auctions where I worked until they plotzed (as my wife once said “you work for children”).

Then hooked up with Manhattan Wine Company storage and been here going on ten years. No sales. No handling stressful logistics work. Deal with some high maintenance clients (you know who you are) but most are quiet and/or reasonable (considering that many are Masters of the Universe). Do my job, go home. Drink wine. I do miss going to trade tastings. The incessant networking at these sucked but it was instructful to be able to quickly taste a wide variety of wines and learn. That said, no longer living in my home town of NYC I never see old wine biz colleagues and miss that.

Long back story for a straightforward question. “Passion” did play a role, albeit it was and is as intellectual as sensory (as well as the element no one likes to discuss). I bounced back and forth from corporate to wine because of the vast financial difference in remuneration. A sizable part of me regrets my choice to go with wine. I’ll never make six figures whereas in a corporate environment I would have some time ago. I am also a big believer in be careful about associating work with a passion. Just as with the work of academia there’s lots of times work makes me wish wine would just go away. Each personality is different. This is simply my opinion, not advice. I believe I could have enjoyed wine throughout my life working outside the industry and the difference would not be that great.

So, it’s really a lack of ambition, indecisiveness, momentum, no clue on any other path forward, that has kept me in wine. Now I am some sort of “expert” and respected by some/many in the business. I’m too old to change course so riding this out until retirement (what’s that, 80 years old?). But given current interests I’d just as soon work in a garden center selling plants. Gardening is more interesting to me now than wine. Or be a DJ and be able to make some societal contribution of the 200,000+ tunes I have in Apple Music.

When I graduated college I had zero, and I mean zero, idea of what to do. So anything after that was up to the winds of fate. (Absolutely no one ever expected that I would study philosophy in graduate school, I barely studied in college.)

Hope this answers something. I am not certain. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

17 Likes