Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/543749
August 2015 WINES&VINES 31 WINEMAKING than other wineries, because it allows maximum quality and control. Navarro's owners, the Cahn-Bennett family, like to grow grapes, with 60% of what the winery crushes coming from their own vineyards. They value local knowl- edge and have had the same vineyard manager for more than 25 years and the same winemaker for more than 20 years. Having vineyard control allows Klein to be both winemaker and "whim- maker," meaning he can seize an opportunity to make last-minute changes that a contract agreement might not allow. Klein explained that Navarro consumers want a wide variety of wines for their tasting room experience. To meet those expectations, Navarro goes beyond its own vineyards to pur- chase varieties that don't do well in Anderson Valley such as Zinfandel, Cabernet and Syrah. All purchased grapes are tightly specified, with mostly of them coming from growers with whom there is a long-standing relationship. Navarro does nearly all the work from crush through bottling. Exceptions are made for qual- ity reasons. For example, it's better for a couple of loads of white grapes to be machine picked in the cool of night rather than hand picked on a hot day in Ukiah. Equipment needed to bring in machine-picked fruit would cost $250,000 or more, so they send it to a custom- crush facility for juicing at a cost of $3,000 per 20-ton load. Navarro bottles in-house to provide flexibil- ity in scheduling its many wines. Klein warns small operations of the hidden maintenance, labor and materials costs associated with hav- ing your own bottling line, and it requires you to be good at something outside your core duties as winemaker. A 10,000-case operation might be able to justify $60,000-$100,000 for a small, used bottling line, but not a half-time maintenance employee at $25,000-$30,000 per year or $2.50-$3 per case, which by itself is greater than the roughly $2 per case charge from a mobile bottler. Hahn Family Wines: do what you do best The largest winery interviewed was Hahn Fam- ily Wines, which has operations in Monterey County, Calif., and administrative offices in Napa. Two talented and experienced leaders— Hahn's president, Tony Baldini, and chief fi- nancial officer Thomas Duhameau—answered the question "do you in-source or outsource?" with their own high-level strategic questions: • Who do we want to be? • What are we about? • Where do I stake my claim? • What do I do best? As Duhameau pointed out, there are an infinite number of business opportunities at any winery. Manage- m e n t r e q u i r e s a n honest assessment and tough decisions about what to do or not do. B a l d i n i u n d e r - stands that while in the long term you should align your ideals with your val- ues, in the short term you do what you can with what you have. An example is how Hahn goes about outsourc- ing production. Their core competencies are "making wines of p l a c e a n d s e l l i n g them," but their pro- duction needs exceed what they can crush at their facility. Hahn has identified local custom-crush facili- ties that can vinify Bordeaux varietals to its standards, and these wines are brought back Hahn has identified local custom-crush facilities that can vinify Bordeaux varietals to its standards, and these wines are brought back in- house for aging and finishing.