Freedom is another Word

The things we think are important when we first start out in the wine business and just how silly they turn out to be in the light of experience (and the real world batting-about-the-head-and-shoulders we subsequently take ) still have toe-curling power.

I created a business in 1996 in an appellation not known outside clonal circles rife with possibility. The vineyard quality in the Livermore Valley was woefully misunderstood and undervalued by practically everyone, and no brand had yet appeared, until mine, whose mission it was to show the world just how great the area could be.

Though a branch of America’s oldest family of winemakers, my experience up until Steven Kent’s founding was as a tween sweeping out warehouses and disgorging champagne (yes, we could still call it that, then) and working the bottling lines of the family’s South Bay outfit in the summers before school started again in the fall.

I had less than zero understanding of the business of wine when my father and I started our brand with the aforementioned goal. Back then, when I was in my thirties, it was crucial to me that we make the most expensive wine from Livermore and that we be seen as being equal in quality to the best wines from Napa. Business plans were created to justify what are in my backward ruminations now, ridiculous goals and were as quickly tossed in the can when the reality of the marketplace smashed the ego-scarred scales in front of my eyes.