So You Want to be a Winemaker
You can grasp the grassiness in a Sauvignon-Blanc. You know the best Pinots and the difference between estate and reserve wine. And you imagine someday you might like to be a vintner but believe you have to uproot to Italy. Well, there are an estimated 6,800 wine labels produced here, and the U.S. accounts for 10% of the world’s wine production. So there’s plenty of room for you. Here’s a glimpse at what it takes to produce your own label.
Assuming you’ve already Googled courses in oenology, there’s something more immersive: apprenticing. There are plenty of opportunities to work as an apprentice with wine producers (California is fertile ground). Be forewarned you’re probably going to clean cellars and perform menial tasks, but all the while you’ll be gaining inside knowledge into the business of wine. If that sounds daunting, you can definitely learn without an apprenticeship. Network, attend workshops and classes, go online. After all, the self-taught route worked for Thomas Jefferson. He and Filippo Mazzei followed a passion for wine (without getting online) learning as they went along and founding what is now Jefferson Vineyards, producing wines even today—some 250 years after they began.
“Winemaking is both an art and a science,” says Kate McGraw, who takes after Jefferson in superhuman Renaissance fashion, pursuing a variety of passions from painting to piano to sailing to winemaking. Her Hopeful Unity Vineyard on Maryland’s Eastern Shore has produced some award-winning wines (under the Crow Vineyard label). She does it all, from growing the grapes herself to making her own wine. “Learning to make wine requires you to learn two whole new languages, the language of the palate from the tongue and the nose, and the language of lab science needed to take the fruit and turn it into a beautiful liquid that maintains the grape's unique signature after it ferments. Once you learn the languages, then the art starts to happen.”
Let’s say you don’t have your own vineyard like Kate. Maybe you don’t want one anyway. After all, Kate’s first harvest, which demanded untold time and energy, took several years to accomplish. “The first spring I planted was followed by a very long drought, and I ended up starting to hand water 2,500 vines until I realized I was truly at the mercy of nature.” It’s okay if you’re not ready to invest in grape growing. You don’t have to. Lots of vintners like Wine Sisterhood based in Napa (https://winesisterhood.com) produce their wines without a vineyard, winery building or tasting room. In the case of Wine Sisterhood, it’s about their network. They work closely with a Napa winery and a team of winemakers to get it done. As a winemaker you’ll be cultivating these kinds of relationships, including with grape growers. You’re searching for high quality grapes because it’s the quality of grape—and grape blends— that will be the cornerstone of your success. Forging these relationships could take a while. So patience is key.
To produce your own label, you’re going to have to multi-task. There are myriads of angles you’ll be overseeing if you’re making it an enterprise and not just producing a barrel for you and your friends: obtaining your license to sell, researching where you can sell your wine, lining up a facility for bottling, figuring out what style of wine you’ll focus on, what grapes you’ll pick and when, where you’ll age your wine and for how long, and so forth. If this sounds overwhelming, take heart. There are companies you can turn to for support such as The Wine Foundry (http://thewinefoundry.com). They assist vintners from winemaking to marketing.
In the end, you might just find this is your calling. For Kate, the rewards have been worth the hard work. “I do remember feeling like it was magic when I poured my first Riesling vintage, and quite satisfied that I had met the challenge, that I had grown and tended the vines, crushed and pressed the grapes, and bottled the wine from start to finish.”
