Why I'm taking the course - Elisa Albella

Wine means....

I cannot remember a single Sunday lunch without wine at home. Wine means family to me, wine means coming together, wine means enjoying the food and life.

Coming from Spain, I have grown up surrounded by a very strong wine culture. My family comes from the North of Spain where there are many wine yards, where “La Rioja” wine is made. Indeed, I can remember my grandfather giving me a sip of wine when I was little as a way of “educating” me, or my father having wine in every single meal.

It wasn’t until after high school that I became more interested about the industry, when I got the right to drink it, of course... I believe the different options, the different intensities of flavor and smell and the huge world behind the industry captured me.

I was not alone in this passion, I had the luck to have friends whose families worked in the industry. We organized some trips with friends to the different regions in Spain where wine is cultivated (La Rioja, Ribera del Duero), where we learnt about the different grapes and methodologies of the process of making wine. After one of these trips, one of my friends whose family owned a small private vineyard decided to register the brand and started commercializing it “for fun”. I helped her with the design of the brand and the distribution of the product. I have to admit the wine in question is not the best one I have tried, but we managed to set up a young brand which was appealing to young customers and five years later the wine is still in the market (see picture below of the brand design).

Another friend’s family runs Cavinsa, which is the exclusive distributor of “Luis Cañas” and “José Pariente” in Spain, two of the wines that have gained the most popularity recently. They have become the option by excellence to buy or order in a restaurant thanks to a competitive price (~25€ per bottle), a good quality (>92 points), an easiness of drinking and an extremely powerful communication.

Having lived these two wine business examples I had no doubt when I came across this course. Not only I am a wine lover in terms of how much I enjoy it and how emotional it makes me, but also in terms of my interest for the industry as a business. I am really excited to learn in a more serious and formal way about it, specially about the industry trends in the world and not only in Europe. After the first class, I was impressed and curious about how the industry is changing across the world: how Chinese consumption is booming, how new countries are entering the market, etc.

In conclusion, I’m hoping to learn while enjoying and having fun with one of the things I love the most in life: WINE.  

Igniting the Senses

Sadly, for me, I grew up in a house without wine, gin martinis were the drink in our household (but not for me). While in college, I tried other less savory concoctions, Kahlua and diet coke, tequila and lemonade, Jagermeister and anything, you get the idea. Fortunately, soon after college, my eyes were opened to the world of wine.

New to New York City and craving connections, I became a member of Sotheby’s Young Collector’s Club. Sotheby’s intent was to hook the 20 something crowd on the auction scene by teaching them just enough about different periods of art and design to peak their interest. Once a month, they would hold a cocktail party with one of their experts.

My interest in wine was first ignited the evening Serena Sutcliffe, Sotheby’s wine expert spoke. She lured me in with racy stories of vintners, and wonderful descriptors of the wines they produced.

30 years have passed since that fateful evening at Sotheby’s, and my interest in wine has grown steadily. My husband and I have a large collection of wine that we enjoy sharing with friends and family. Our two sons, now in their twenties, have been exposed to a great deal of wine, both at home and on family trips.

For me, wine has always ignited all of my senses: visiting vineyards, which from afar, represent a visual patchwork, touching the grapes and vines as you walk through their straight rows, smelling the grapes as you open your car window on a drive through Napa or Bordeaux, tasting the complicated, layered flavors of wine, and last but not least, hearing the laughter and conversation sparked by a good bottle of wine.

After 30 years in fashion and design, I am here at Stanford as a DCI Partner to explore other interests. Most of my coursework has been at the GSB, focused on entrepreneurship, with the balance of my courses in sustainability and earth systems. I am currently in my second term of Startup Garage, where I am on a team hoping to develop a media platform for the wine industry. I am looking forward to digging deeper and learning more about the Dynamics of the Global Wine Industry.

Why Wine?

Wine is something that has been an integral part of family traditions for my entire life. My mother is obsessed with tradition and sentiment, and we would have Friday-night shabbat dinners every week with a blessing over wine as one of the crucial ingredients to starting off the meal. I never gave much attention to what was in the glass at a young age, instead taking pleasure out of drinking before I was legally of age. As I grew older, I began to ask more questions about the differences in what we were having, where it was from, etc - but still never gained the knowledge to fully appreciate and understand that there was much more to what I was drinking than just the liquid in the glass. I figure now is about as good a time as any to start figuring that out!

In the fall, my mother visited campus and we went to her favorite vineyard which happens to be up in Napa - Shafer Vineyards. We did a tasting and heard about the history of the vineyard as well as how they positioned themselves in the market. They also discussed a lower-cost brand that they created to explore new markets. I had never really thought about the wine as a business versus something that I had enjoyed every Friday night with family. When exploring course options, I was pleasantly surprised to see this listing and then began to think further about what I could learn by enrolling. In addition to expanding my knowledge of the basics of wine and gaining a deeper appreciation for new and varied bottles, there is much to be learned by studying the business principles of a global, ever-changing, and omni-present industry.

Of Floss and Vines

The Napa and Sonoma valleys are home to the highest concentration of retired dentists and orthodontists found anywhere in the world*.

Tooth-care professionals from all over the country, after decades surrounded by cavities and canines, flock to these rolling hills and verdant valleys to spend their hard-earned retirement on a new kind of filling - that of barrels and bottles. Root canals give way to rootstock, plaque gives way to Phylloxera, and these orally-oriented oenophiles hurl themselves into growing grapes and making wine.

But why?

The question has dogged me since I first uncovered this pattern, traveling the Silverado Trail during my undergrad FRENLANG 60D: French Viticulture (read: wine tasting) class field trip. One winery after another, owned and operated by a periodontist-turned-vintner. Having just learned to taste the rich cabs and tropical chardonnays of the region, but yet to have tasted the day-to-day grind of the working world, I was perplexed.

I finally have a hypothesis to this crushing conundrum.

With apologies to any aspiring dentists: You don't get into dental work because you love teeth. You get into dental work because it’s a well-paying, high-barrier-to-entry, recession-proof, automation-proof job. It’s honest work. It’s stable work. It’s practical.

Wine is impractical.

Making wine is an insane endeavor. It requires growing millions of delicate tiny grapes on wildly expensive dirt, purposefully pruning and throwing away a huge portion of the crop, painstakingly hand-harvesting, and sorting, and crushing, and fermenting, and filling a thousand-dollar wooden barrel, and bottling, only to let those bottles sit in your basement for a few years in the hopes they might get a little better.

Even enjoying wine feels like a small act of rebellion. In an age of multitasking and attention-hungry notifications and instant gratification and SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS, taking the time to sit and savor and contemplate something complicated and subtle and old, even for a second, is an escape.

The Dentists have it right, almost.

After spending a career in a field that makes sense, one must crave a slightly nonsensical next chapter. To trade headgear for Healdsburg, molars for merlot, must be to rediscover some dormant, youthful, vigorous freedom.

But the Dentists fail on one point, that so many of us fail on, that I so deeply fear I will fail on as well:

We wait too long to do the things we love.

Perhaps leaping into the wine industry isn’t a crazy an endeavor as it seems. Perhaps there’s a way to find that perfect blend of the rational and irrational, of dispassion and passion, of business and pleasure, that will balance and harmonize and bring out the greatest parts of each. I hope just maybe I can find such a path in this class - if not even to take myself, but at least to know it can exist.

* [Citation Required], but seriously there are a ton of them.

Why I'm taking this class - Tyler Ernst

I'm relatively new to wine. My family didn't drink it growing up, and the Franzia and Carlo Rossi I had in college didn't exactly ignite a passion for the beverage. However, I did leave college with a best friend, Corinne Rich, who had grown up in Santa Rosa and had an actual appreciation for wine. We used to joke about starting a wine company together one day - she'd do the winemaking, and I'd do the soulless business stuff in the background.

Five years and many bottles of wine later, that joke became a reality. We founded Birdhorse Wines in June, together with Corinne's girlfriend, Katie Rouse. You can learn more here if you're interested, and I'd of course love it if you'd join our mailing list and follow us on Instagram. We've got three tons of grapes fermenting and will be selling (hopefully!) Verdelho, Carignan, Valdiguié, and a rose starting in April/May. Corinne and Katie have made some excellent product, so I figured I should take this class in order to better educate myself about the industry and to learn some experience-based lessons rather than continue to shoot from the hip as I've been doing so far on the business side.

I'm excited to share more about Birdhorse as the class goes on and to take some lessons immediately into the real world.

Wine and Family

 Wine (and whisky) is how my family bonds. 

I can’t remember exactly when the family wine drinking started. In middle school, my parents had a “wine circle” with their friends. Once I turned 18, I started getting poured a glass, and certain wines became synonymous with major life milestones. For me, getting into college is synonymous with Chateau d’yQuem, and for my sister, her first job offer is a 1997 Chateau Margaux. And while we both got introduced to wine through some “great achievement,” over the years, we have all started drinking together regularly. 

With my sister on the East Coast, me on the West Coast, and my parents out in Asia, we no longer have as many chances to sit in the same room and converse. So, now when we are all in the same city, which wines we will eat with dinner becomes a grand ordeal. All of us visit the neighborhood liquor store (K&L) and load a shopping cart of wine. My dad and sister argue over how many bottles of wine to bring to a restaurant; I now know the corkage policy of too many restaurants. And at dinner, my parents fight over who drank the remnants of my mom’s wine when she left the table to use the restroom. Anyone who has ever had dinner with us will have experienced this chaos firsthand; to this date, nobody has been able to drive back after a family dinner with the Kims. 

I’m in this class because although I have tasted a variety of wines (mostly French), I have no idea why I like the taste of certain ones more than others. I’m curious about the price points (some of which seem ludicrous!), and across different countries, how I can find wines with similar flavor profiles. After many difficulties trying to ship certain wines from stores across the U.S. (New Jersey / New York), I’ve also become curious about licensing and distribution regulation. 

I’d love to come away from this class with relevant, practical knowledge to take back to my family. I want to be able to source and procure wines that we would all enjoy and be able to select wines I would enjoy from a wine list. Who knows, maybe with some luck, I will end up in the wine / alcohol industry, too!  

Why I Am Taking This Class? -Sawyer Clark

This is a simple questions with a three-part answer. All three of which relate to my family.

The first reason I am taking this course is that I grew up in a farming family in the Willamette Valley (Oregon, USA) and have seen an explosion in the number of vineyards near my childhood home. My parents and brother still live and work in agriculture in Oregon and regularly communicate the impact wine has had on the area. I used to think that vineyards are typically started by retirees who want a second career making a very niche, high-end wine. However, what I have seen in the Willamette Valley is traditional fruit, vegetable, and grass seed farmers planting large vineyards to supply commodity-type grapes for massive scale wine production (think Costco).

The second reason is that my sister manages the wine club for a winery in Lodi, California (about 2 hours east of Stanford). Her job has her doing lots of customer communication and direct sales in the tasting room as well as online. It also takes her around the U.S. to sell wine to wholesale buyers. The thing she likes most about the role is the wholesale selling. She has become very interested in wine as an industry and talking with her about wine has grown in me a desire to gain a better understanding of the drink from field to retail store.

Finally, I married into a wine family.  My wife is from northern California and her family loves wine. Through them I have learned to appreciate the drink I once thought people only consumed as a status symbol. Spending time with them over the past 8 years has exposed me to many different kinds of wine and helped me understand some of the art behind the drink.

In a spirit of full disclosure, I have a terrible palette for tasting wine. I hope that through this course I learn to appreciate the subtleties in wine, but it is honestly very difficult for me to taste them, let alone appreciate them.