Careers In The Wine Business

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Wine isn't just a product. It's a world, all over the world. A winery in Bordeaux, a restaurant in Chicago, a sales office in London, a retailer in Los Angeles, and a wine school in Barcelona, are just a few of the interlocking pieces of the amazing (and fun!) world of wine. Wine is a gateway drug that will get you hooked on the human race.

Wine professionals straddle the white-collar and blue-collar worlds. To know wine means to have specialized knowledge about wine, countries, geography, history, culture, food, and the list goes on. It means reading and writing and understanding how business works. Being a wine professional also means moving and unpacking boxes, stocking, making deliveries, and working a cash register. 

Wine professionals typically start as wine enthusiasts who take their passion to the next level. However, there are many pathways to becoming a wine professional and there are many opportunities across multiple disciplines such as retail and hospitality. The very first thing to know about  working in wine in the United States is the industry (wine, spirits, and beer) still operates under Prohibition-era regulations called the "three-tiered system."

The three-tiered system is an anathema to anyone who doesn't work for a large distributor and it isn't good for the consumer (that’s you). The Volstead Act, which ushered in an ignominious period of American “sobriety,” was passed in 1919 and, to give you an idea of how well it was received, the next decade was called “The Roaring Twenties,” it created America's first organized crime syndicates, and, to this day, over 100 years later, ensures that consumers will pay a lot more for a bottle of wine than they should. It is safe to say that Prohibition was an unmitigated disaster that haunts our wallets to this day.

Unfortunately, the three-tiered system survived Prohibition's repeal, and its structures remain in place. Here are the three tiers:

Tier 1: Producers. In the United States, if you make wine (or any alcoholic beverage) you cannot sell directly to the consumer except in a few exempt circumstances such as serving wine in your winery’s tasting room or direct-to-consumer shipments if you join a “wine club,” and even those have strict volume and shipping restrictions. For the most part, producers sell their wine to Tier 2 – distributors/importers.

Tier 2: Distributors/Importers. This is the “middle man” tier and the most powerful. Every well-paid lobbyist on K Street is from Tier 2 because they are the only tier that benefits from Prohibition-era law.

Tier 3: Retailers/Restaurants/Hospitality. Distributors and importers lay out a lot of money to purchase wine from the producers. They mark up the wine and resell it to retailers, restaurants, hotels, and any other hospitality-related business that may need wine. If you are a business that sells wine, you don’t buy it from the producer. You buy it from the middleman (Tier 2).

In every tier, there are many careers but, for the most part, they are sales jobs. The category that is the exception is the viticulturists (i.e., farmers) who grow the grapes.

Viticulture

·      Winemakers

·      Vineyard managers

·      Vineyard workers

·      Nurseries

·      Grape pickers (seasonal)

·      Cellar workers

·      Chemists/lab workers

Producers

·      Large companies that own multiple brands. Examples: Constellation (U.S.) LVMH (France)

·      Family-owned wineries. Examples: Silver Oak (Napa Valley, CA), Billecart-Salmon (Champagne, France)

·      Winemakers. Examples: Paul Hobbs, Heidi Peterson Barrett (U.S.), Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon (France), Angelo Gaja, Marchesi Antinori (Italy)

·      Executives

·      Legal

·      Marketing
Ambassadors

·      Tasting Room staff

Distributors

·      Companies that distribute wine (or any other beverage). Examples: Southern Glazers, Chambers & Chambers, Skurnik

·      Importers who import wine from foreign countries. Examples: Kermit Lynch, Rosenthal

·      Executives

·      Acquisitions (people who find new brands to add to the company "book") 

·      Sales

·      Marketing

·      Legal

·      IT staff

·      Warehouse workers

·      Drivers

Restaurants/Hospitality

·      Owner

·      Beverage Director

·      Wine Director

·      Sommeliers (high-end restaurants)

Importers

·      Owner

·      Buyers (these are the people who travel around the world to choose wine to import into the U.S.)

·      Administrators

·      Legal

·      IT staff

Wine Retail

·      Owner

·      Buyers

·      Sales Associates

·      Marketing

·      Operations Staff

·      IT Staff

Wine Education

·      Wine certification organizations. Examples: Wine Spirits Education Trust, Society of Wine Educators, Wine Scholar's Guild, Court of Master Sommeliers

·      Teachers

·      Administrative Staff

·      IT staff

·      Wine education organizations. Examples: Wine Folly

Other

·      Auction Houses. Examples: Christie's, Heritage Auctions

·      Wine Tourism Companies

As you may have noticed, if you want to work in wine there are many options. While wineries are concentrated in certain areas (California, Oregon, Washington, and New York), there are distributors, retailers, restaurants, and hotels in every town in every state. Whether you’re a chemistry whiz who can apply your talents to the winemaking art or someone who can sell ice to an Eskimo, there is a place for you in the wine industry.

The pathways are varied but simple.

Love the outdoors? Love growing things? Love wine? If you are a farmer and an artist, viticulture may be your calling - and it’s a calling. Growing grapes is hard work. Making wine is hard work. You must be passionate and adventurous and have an intimate connection to land and nature.

If you want to take an academic route, many colleges and universities offer enology degrees (most notably the University of California at Davis), many wine education organizations offer professional certifications, and any business or financial degree can be applied to any wine business in any tier.

If you want to sell wine, wine retailers are on the front lines. From Mom & Pop wine shops to regional retailers like K&L Wine Merchants, or ones with a national imprint like Total Wine, retail is one of the most immersive ways to learn about wine from around the world – and sell it. The top of the retail world (besides the owner) is the wine buyers. These are the professionals the wineries, distributors, and importers woo to carry their products. They are the decision makers and the best ones get to travel the world and taste wine to find the next best thing.

If you love the food and wine connection, open a restaurant. Wine will most likely be an important part of your business model. If you don’t have the resources to be a restauranteur, go the Sommelier route or become a Beverage/Wine Director. It’s a difficult schedule, but the rewards are great. Somebody at every restaurant is the buyer and the buyer decides what to buy and what will go into the diner’s glasses.

If you’re all about sales, earning big-time commission money, and climbing the corporate ladder, working for a distributor may be for you. You can also be a political lobbyist who spends your days convincing the U.S. Senate and Congress to pass laws more favorable to the wine industry as a whole.  This is where the money is.

If you love drinking wine, talking about wine, and teaching other people about wine, you can become a wine educator or start/be employed by a wine tourism company (that organizes group wine tastings). There is no end to wine knowledge. You can study it every day and still only know a small amount of what there is to know.

To be a wine professional, all you need is a love of wine and a strong work ethic. If you’re armed with those two traits, success (and a whole lot of fun) awaits you in the amazing world of wine.

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Philip Roufail wrote this article for Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can visit the website, www.insidercs.com.

Is That Huge Raise Really Worth It? Dan Hurley Didn't Think So

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You may have seen the internet explode recently when news broke that Dan Hurley, the head men’s basketball coach of the NCAA champion University of Connecticut (UCONN) Huskies, turned down a five-year $70 million ($14 million a year) head coaching position with the Los Angeles Lakers, arguably the crown jewel franchise of the NBA.

The general reaction has been illuminating, with many lay critics saying Hurley must be crazy to turn down that kind of money. To keep things in perspective, the Lakers’ offer represents a substantial raise. UCONN pays him $5.2 million a year, so he’s leaving roughly $9 million a year on the table – a figure that already puts him in the top 0.1% of income earners in the United States so it’s easy for us to shrug off Dan’s decision to stay in Hartford. What does it matter? He’s already rich! The fact remains that Dan turned down a significant pay raise and there are good reasons for it.

So, let’s bring the numbers down to something more relatable to those of us who earn more average salaries. Let’s say you make $75,000 a year and, like Dan Hurley, you are offered a 180% increase in base salary. That’s a total of $210,000! That’s a lot of creme-filled doughnuts. What reasons could possibly exist for anyone to say “no” to an extra $135,000? Let’s look at the factors to consider with the much bigger paycheck:

• Work-Life Balance: If someone gives you a $135,000 raise, accepting this kind of offer will be life-altering in more ways than money, most notably potentially cutting into your work-life balance. If you don’t want your company calling you during the middle of your daughter’s wedding demanding you get on a conference call, you may want to reconsider accepting the 180% pay increase.

• Work Culture: Money is, without question, great, but the work culture of your new employer will impact your life in many more ways than the money. The exasperated exclamation, "They don't pay me enough to deal with this kind of [fill in the blank]” has been uttered more than once in the workplace, but the reality is that work dread does not take cash, stock options, or equity. If your work culture is a breeding ground of toxic despair you will inevitably reach a point where you might accept pocket lint as payment if you can just get out. Without knowing the full story, it’s okay to wonder if Dan Hurley had concerns about the current work culture of the Los Angeles Lakers (without naming names of course).

• The Nature of Your Work: Some professions exist for one purpose – to make money. People who are the happiest with their careers and life, however, are people whose work has a purpose. Back to Dan Hurley. Working with college students, many of whom will not compete in organized sports after college, has a purpose beyond winning back-to-back NCAA titles. You are more than a coach. You are a mentor and a friend.  Coaching professional athletes has only one purpose – winning a championship to make the billionaire owner happy and keep the advertising and merchandising dollars flowing. Still great, but not the same.

• Your Co-Workers: Different work cultures and purposes mean different people. There are very different workplace environments, and they value different things. Do your values align enough with your coworkers to “keep up with the Joneses?” when end-of-year evaluations take place and you’re ranked and rated against them? The internal competition and backbiting resulting from higher salaries can be fierce.

• Relocation: The East Coast and the West Coast are practically different countries. Small towns are different than big cities. Hartford and Los Angeles are as different as Mars and Venus. Your pay raise will not go as far if you’re relocating to a more expensive area or city, whereas your standard of living may be higher in the market which requires you to earn less money to sustain it. Relocating also means leaving family and friends and, if applicable, uprooting your children and making them start over in a new place and school. You may move from a low-traffic area to one where you’re going to spend two hours in your car every day so you can afford to buy a house.

These are some factors you may want to consider when weighing the totality of a mind-blowing job offer. That isn’t to say that Goldilocks scenarios don’t exist, and you can end up with a dream life and salary, which is definitely possible. It’s just important to remember that money isn’t everything – and Dan Hurley proves it.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

New Job? Time To Tell The World On LinkedIn!

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You got the job! Congratulations! Once you’ve told your parents, friends, and significant other it’s time to brag a little where it really counts - LinkedIn.

Starting a new job is a major milestone and transition. You want your professional network to know how amazing you are, so LinkedIn is the perfect place to post a formal announcement about your new position. It’s nice to watch the comments fill up with stuff like, “Congratulations!” Etc. However, by posting a new job announcement on LinkedIn you can accomplish more than just a lot of justifiable kudos.

You’re not just starting a new job. You’re leaving an old one, and no matter how it played out it was and will always be an important part of your professional journey. Moving forward, it is advantageous to maintain relationships with your former coworkers so they will enthusiastic members of your professional network. Keep that in mind when you’re crafting your announcement.

The announcement may drive traffic to your profile, which you may find desirable. If you post on LinkedIn, people will periodically see your posts but that does not automatically mean more profile views. However, an announcement of this kind piques others’ interest so you want to make sure your profile is in its best form like making your house spotless before having company over.

Ready? Let’s run through a quick checklist that will make your announcement a breeze.

1. Important: Do not take any of the actions described in this checklist or post your announcement until you’ve started the new job. Put it on your Day 1 list, but not before. Life is unpredictable and the last thing you want to deal with is a retraction due to a change in business conditions or an unanticipated blip on your background check (oops).

2. LinkedIn has a function that allows your network or the general public to see any significant changes you make to your profile. For example, when you change the company name on your profile from Old Company to New Company, LinkedIn will automatically post in your feed that you’ve made that change. The same goes for other changes. It’s up to you if you wish for updates to trickle out in this fashion or if you would rather make all the updates first. You can enable or disable this function in your general settings.

3. Check the email address you have tied to the account. Is it a personal email address or the one from your old job? If it’s an old job email address you’ll want to update it with your new work email, which should be provided to you on your first day, or to a personal email if you would rather receive emails there.

4. If you have an old profile picture, now is the time for a new one. Keep it professional. A photo of you on a beach somewhere is for Instagram or TikTok, not LinkedIn (unless your job is managing that beach!).

5. Change the essential information in your LinkedIn profile header - new company name, new title, location (if applicable), and descriptors.

6. It’s your first day so there is no expectation that your new job section is going to be complete with job duties and accomplishments. It’s up to you, but just so it’s not blank you may consider a few lines describing the company itself and what your new role will be in it.

7. If there are any related LinkedIn groups or organizations related to your new position now is the time to join them. For example, let’s say your new job is working for a university. Search for alumni groups, education groups/organizations, or whatever is most aligned with your position and ask to join their community.

8. Even if you’re a LinkedIn super-user and post content every day (only a small percentage of LinkedIn’s billion users are content creators), you probably don’t spend a lot of time on your profile. When you’re going to announce a big transition, it’s time to review every section of your profile to see if everything is still the way you want it. You may find a typo you never noticed before, or perhaps a description you wrote a year ago isn’t up to your current standards. Maybe it’s all perfect. The only way you will know is if you read it top to bottom with a critical eye.

9. Now it’s time for the big announcement. As previously mentioned, your lead should be an acknowledgment of your previous job and gratitude to your former co-workers and mentors. This will go a long way. If you left on poor terms, or the experience was a nightmare, you can still muster a generic thank you for the experience, which taught you something – even if it was what not to do (just don’t use that phrase!).

10. In the second part of your announcement, say how excited you are to join your New Company and make it the best business that has ever existed on planet Earth. Be as humble as possible while you pat yourself on the back for landing what may be the best job ever created since the dawn of time.

11. You have one more step before you post your public announcement. Write a less formal “heads up” message to your LinkedIn network connections and send it just before posting the public announcement.

12. Post your public announcement and bask in the adulation that will certainly come your way. You deserve it. And make sure to respond kindly to the posts in which people congratulate you.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.