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WINEMAKING TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT 44 WINES&VINES June 2017 You know how good your Zinfandel is... Promote your wines to leading Zinfandel enthusiasts and extend your winery's relationship in the market. JoinUs! We are champions of Zinfandel— America's Heritage Wine Become part of our proud legacy zinfandel.org • 530-274-4900 Zinfandel Advocates & Producers is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. ZAP is dedicated to advancing public knowledge of and appreciation for American Zinfandel and its unique place in our culture and history. Waitte bought the property in June 2012, and after a flurry of planning and design work, his hearing for a winery-use permit and associated building permits was delayed until the spring, and he didn't receive final approval from the county until April. That left about five months to build the winery. "No one, no one said I could do it," Waitte said. "The county, the builders, nobody said I could do it. What I said to everybody every single day was: 'We do not have a Plan B. We're going to do this.'" Waitte soon found himself acting as the general contractor, and chief among his du- ties was negotiating between the various subcontractors to ensure they all worked well together and remained focused on getting the winery ready for the fast-approaching harvest. On most worksites, the concrete guys, plumbers and electricians all like to do their work on their own, when no other con- tractors are there. Waitte added language to all their contracts that said they had to be on the site with other workers and then had to conduct nearly daily diplomacy among the varying trades to make sure everything was done quickly and correctly. The finishing steps of the winery had to be coordinated with the latest reports from the vineyard, so Waitte could match tanks that were coming online with harvest. "I asked them, 'What's coming in guys? What tank do you need to go live?'" he recalled. "That was our first three weeks of production. It was crazy, but it worked." Waitte also had nothing but praise for Napa County officials during the process. "They were incredibly cooperative in understanding our production schedule and our construction schedule," he said. The winery is now at full capacity, and Waitte said he's happy with Tamber Bey's production at around 11,000 cases. "I'm pretty happy right at that level. We created a business model with what I call the legs of the stool: custom crush, tasting room, club and distribution," he said. "It's a really well- balanced model—complicated to run, but it's not unlike you would do a stock portfolio. You're not going to put all your investments in one stock." The wine is primarily sold direct to con- sumer through the club and tasting room, but it's also distributed in 28 states and few international markets. Tamber Bey produces two lines of wines: a selection of popular varietals from the estate and other vine- yards, and a line of higher priced wines from select vineyards. And the property is still a horse ranch. In addition to Barry and Jennifer Waitte's eight horses, the ranch is also home to about two-dozen horses from Sunrise Horse Res- cue and the horses of Ransome Rombauer, the daughter of K.R. and Laura Rombauer of Rombauer Vineyards, who at age 18 is a Grand Prix-level jumper and winner of sev- eral national honors. "It's kind of a potpourri of horses," Waitte said of the ranch, which is also home to eight rescued miniature horses. The tasting room leads to a central court- yard that's flanked by horse stalls on one side. When Wines & Vines visited, a table of boister- ous tasters on a tour sipped wines as a few horses looked on, occasionally neighing and swishing their tails. Waitte notes that all the furniture, includ- ing the bar, was from the pop-up tasting room he opened in 2010. It was moved to the new winery and by chance fit the room used for hospitality perfectly. That is just another ex- ample of how it all seemed to come together, even if Waitte hadn't come to Napa with the intention of building a horse ranch and winery on the same property. Some of the horse stalls located on the sides of a courtyard outside the winery tasting room are still in use.