Fresh Starts–Winemaking as a Second Career

Winemakers come to their craft from a dizzying array of first careers. Some are connected to wine or winemaking and some are not.

In the first category is Lane Tanner, a Pinot maven based in Santa Barbara. She was a chemistry major, a terrific first step toward winemaking. Jeff Cohn of Jeff Cohn Cellars in Oakland was in the hospitality industry when he discovered a love for fine wines. Tim and Lynn Carl of Huge Bear Winery in Santa Cruz trace their winemaking passion to six and four generations, respectively, of Northern California family grape growing. Bill Hunter of Hunter Wine Cellars, Sonoma County, was a wine steward at a high-end Pasadena restaurant. Bill Easton, founder of Sierra Foothills’ Terre Rouge, owned a savvy wine shop during California’s golden post-Prohibition wine resurgence.

In the other, “non-related” category of first careers is Carroll Kemp of Red Car Winery, a former Hollywood producer; Rich Frank, founder of Frank Family Vineyards, a high-powered Hollywood executive; Kerry Murphy, who owned a thriving tire company before he began DuMOL of Russian River Valley; Randy Lewis and Mario Andretti, race car drivers, now both owners of Napa Valley wineries; Stanford history professor Dr. Jerry Seps, who founded Napa’s Storybook Mountain Vineyards. Wholesale pharmaceuticals distributor Al Brounstein was the mind behind iconic Diamond Creek Vineyards in Napa.

And what do all of these learn when they start their careers as winemakers? From a quarter century of interviews with hundreds of California winemakers, the biggest shock seems to be “how hard it is to sell the wine.”

There are so many tasks involved with wine production — locating (or growing) great fruit, securing (or building) the space to make your wine, determining your steps of production, aging and bottling the wine — that new winemakers often give little thought to how they are going to sell it.

In the early days, some would put a couple of cases in their cars and make the rounds of retailers and restaurants. Others would battle for distributors (hard to find for small wineries) and then “take their show on the road” to educate retailers about their area (“Paso Robles — that’s in Texas, right?”).

The current trend for small wineries is to create vibrant wine clubs and tasting rooms.

While a second career in winemaking has its challenges, most of these new winemakers wouldn’t have it any other way. They study winemaking at a university, or take classes at local colleges, or find a mentor. For their grapes, today’s start-up winemakers typically groom relationships with growers rather than attempt to purchase land or vineyards of their own.

Their passion is in winemaking, and they are thrilled to be walking vineyards and laboring over their wine in the cellar. It is truly a dream come true.

We invite you to taste wines handcrafted in small batches by passionate winemakers.  Each month, we hand-select wines from small, artisan wineries and share them with our members.

Since 1990, it’s been our wine club’s mission to help artisan wineries share their small-batch wines with wine enthusiasts everywhere. At The California Wine Club we happen to think these wines simply taste better than the mass-produced wines that dominate store shelves.

We visit the wineries, meet the families and winemakers behind the wines and then invite them to share their favorite wines with our wine club members. Every wine featured in our wine of the month club comes from a real-working winery.

Come join our adventure!