To the Winemakers-a Community Message
This weekend I was asked to speak at an event celebrating harvest and 30 years of wine making at a small producer of boutique wines in Napa Valley. It was an honor to share the day in the vineyard under the golden Napa Valley sunshine with friends and wine lovers, so I wanted to share what I said and how it pertains to the wine industry today.
There is an old adage, "How do you make a million dollars in the wine industry? Spend 2 (million). I think later it was changed to $3 million and now due to inflation it is probably more like $10m+, but you get the idea. Nobody goes into wine making intending to get rich. In fact, quite the opposite. You have to have to be quite rich at first to even start a wine business. And for many, that means finding, luring, and hiring a sought after "cult" wine maker. Which also takes a lot of money if you are out bid or they don't align with your production philosophy. Being a grower is even harder. Especially in an industry where it gets harder each year to sell fruit you have spent a meticulous amount of effort and time planting and nurturing.
Why the hell would anybody do this? Especially in America, a relatively young country with a very new wine industry and a product still so new to so many younger people. Americans drink beer (mostly) and in the Mid-West-hard alcohol. Wine is for Californians, Texans, New Yorkers, and a smattering of Chicagoans and Floridans in the heat, right?
You have to have deep passion, be crazy, or a bit of both. You have to love what you do. You have to love growing, sowing, and harvesting at the right moment. You have to have a nuance for when to rest in barrel, move from tank to barrel and when to bottle. When to pick. When to move to market and how to price so you don't lose your shirt without losing customers. Yet here we are. Standing in the golden Napa Sunshine on a Saturday afternoon swirling, sipping and eating wood fired pizza. Because somebody took a chance. Somebody gave up a different life to move to a vineyard in a remote area to pursue a dream and nurture it. A winemaker in America has a choice: 1.they can either work for a large corporate conglomerate (which is almost every winery left in Napa and Sonoma these days) and make wine under very strict guidelines with a single purpose: Sell as much wine as possible to make as much money as possible in bulk- and make sure it NEVER changes year after year. 2. They can try to find a mid sized company who will let them do what they want, hopefully, and get creative about blends, tank time, barrel time, etc. 3. They can opt for freedom and go it alone, risk everything, and hope the market appreciates their artistry.
Along the way I have met many in options 2 and 3. 3 is what wine country was built on. Immigrants who came over with a few rootstocks, planting grapes because that's just what you do when you are Italian. Or French. Or Polish, Croatian, or Israeli. Wine speaks. It calls. And when you are an American and you get the call, you answer. If you are French, you do not have the freedom to do as you please and make wine your own way. You make it EXACTLY the way they have for the past 2,000 years. And let's face it the French know a thing or two about wine making.
And so, to all those who forge ahead living their passion, pursuing the dream of wine making in a style that breaks barriers, shifts palates, creates memories, brings people together, in good times and bad, feels the pride, joy, heartbreak of every glass, every toast, every celebration and every memory: Cheers to you. The ones who forge ahead when weather and pests destroys crops. When economies shift. When banks foreclose. When taxes are raised. When production costs rise. When sales decline. When the media weaponizes alcohol and tells a story of how wine kills. You know who you are. You know what's true. You know the people who surround you every day. In the tasting room. At dawn in the vineyards. Cellar rats who work all night.
Cheers to you all for making life more enjoyable, more fun, and for bringing us all together once again for yet another harvest.
