There is no substitute for making great wine. It’s what’s in the bottle that counts. While you can figure out how to attract visitors to your winery or sell just about any wine, the pride comes from making a wine that is truly special.
Part of that attempt to create top-notch wine involves competitive tastings to see how our wines stack up against wines from other wineries. Our winemaking team and some others on our winery staff taste and grade wines from four or five flights—each of which features six to eight samples—taking notes on each. This is where learning to properly spit out one’s wine is critical, since drinking all that vino would compromise the process and lead to a whole lot of trouble.
During the tastings, we go around the room so that each person can offer descriptions of the smell, flavor, and taste of each wine. There are no wrong answers, but there are certainly answers that are more educated than others. Kathryn delves into the nuances of exactly how to describe the various flavors in wines. As for Craig, he’s just gotten to the point where he can tell if a wine is corked or not. He can tell whether or not to recommend it to someone who wants a dry wine, a sweet wine, a full-bodied wine, or a lighter wine. In short he knows the basics, but he still lacks the sophisticated palate that professional winemakers share. So when it comes to the tastings, he jokes that when all the tasting notes are collected, his are secretly thrown in a wastebasket. In fact, knowing that the votes will be averaged and feeling that his aren’t as good as either the winemakers’ or Kathryn’s, Craig often throws them away himself.
Of course, the tastings that can make or break a wine—or at least its sales—are those conducted by the professionals who share their opinions with the public. Wine critics may seem like gods to vintners like us, but they are only human. Even a wine critic with the best palate can taste a wine one day and have a different reaction the next day, depending on dinner the night before, breakfast that day, and plain old mood. Couple that with the vast array of wonderful wines out there, and great wines will inevitably get overlooked.
So while high scores are wonderful, and while we were certainly striving for our share, we knew we couldn’t rely on them for long-term success. We needed to build a brand that people connected with and recognized, one based on wines crafted according to our style.
This wasn’t just about the wine. Our name would be on those bottles, so it was personal. It still is. So we needed to create a brand and an experience that reflected who we are.
From the beginning, we would sit around talking about why the world needed another winery and what it would take to make us different, worthy, and relevant. In 2006, we met with Duane Knapp, a branding consultant, to help us define exactly who we were and what HALL Wines stood for.
Our small team consisting of Mike and a few others gathered in the wine room of our house. After quick introductions, Duane took us through a soul-searching exercise to figure out the future of our brand. Great Napa wineries each express their own personalities, and the winery owners, or vintners as they are often called, are a critical part of that personality. Robert Mondavi was the maverick who did things his way. At Frog’s Leap, John Williams’s sense of humor comes through in everything he does. Quintessa exudes international elegance, just like proprietors Agustin and Valeria Huneeus. The natural, flavorful wines of Chappellet are reflected in their tasting room’s personal, family-style vibe, which completely fits Donn and Molly Chappellet and their family. We needed to figure out how to translate our personalities into our brand.
Working with a branding consultant is really like seeing a psychiatrist. Since a solid brand is based on who you are, you have to know yourself in order to develop it. Over the course of several sessions, we mapped out our sense of who we are as people along with our winery-related aspirations. Whenever our team met—whether we were down in our wine cellar or seated around our dining room table—we’d sip our wines and scribble words on sticky notes which we affixed to poster boards.
“Who are you?” Duane asked the eight of us again and again. “Give me words. I just want words. Who are you? Why do you exist?”
Today we have a much easier time answering that question, but back then it wasn’t easy to come up with terms that really pinpointed the essence of our winery. Slowly, however, they started to emerge.
We had figured out by that point that we wanted to convert our vineyards to organic farming. Not only was it better for the land, it was better for the health of our workers in the field, who at that point included our son. So organic was one of the words. It worked not only because it specified how we farm, but also because our growth was—and has continued to be—organic. As opportunities come our way, we grow. We learn more and we grow some more.
Quality was another word that surfaced immediately, but what did that really mean?
Terms that defined us as people were harder to identify. We knew that we loved the land and truly cared about the quality of wine we produced. We also knew that we felt a personal connection to the process. We knew we weren’t stuffy and that we loved being around people. But summing all that up in just a few words was daunting and required serious self-analysis as well as time.
One thing had been clear from the start: We wanted our winery to be more than just a production facility. We wanted it to reflect our passions for nature, art, and architecture.
Craig, the son of an art teacher, had started collecting art as a teenager. Until we met, Kathryn considered art as too extravagant to buy for the home. Rather, it was something she would go to see in a museum. Now we collect art together, and that is perhaps the most time-intensive and fulfilling passion we share outside of work. Without it, life would seem flat and empty. We also love to share the paintings and sculptures we’ve acquired—in our home, businesses, and public spaces and, yes, in our wineries. At the entrance to our St. Helena HALL Winery, for example, you will see a round wall hanging by artist Nick Cave measuring 17 feet in diameter and made out of bits of bejeweled fabrics. Even though we didn’t have a wall big enough for it, we bought this work as an anniversary gift for each other in 2010. It sat in a very big wooden box in the basement for five years, until we built our new winery facility at St. Helena and created a wall that would serve as the perfect backdrop.
Art can go everywhere—in the garden, by the parking spaces, among the grapevines, in the tasting rooms, in our production facilities, and in offices that are only visible to the staff. Hopefully it’s enjoyable and stimulating for the people who visit as well as for all of us who work here. So we never questioned whether or not including art at our wineries was a good or bad idea. Art was a critical component from day one. We wanted to share something that is a personal and immensely important part of our lives. Which is exactly how we think about the wine we make and the wine setting we’ve created.
People have helicoptered to HALL Wines to propose to their beloved. We’ve hosted countless wine education events that people have turned into anniversary and birthday celebrations. People return for the wine, as well as for the sensory experience of being at the winery itself and the enjoyment of the setting.
We love when we get feedback from our winery guests saying that they feel a connection not just to the wines and their winery experience, but also to the winery team. Participants in the wine tastings and dinners Kathryn holds each year across the country regularly describe to her their winery visit in great detail, right down to the name of the wine educator who hosted them and why he or she was so special.
Wine is more than just a product. It isn’t something that people tend to drink like they do Coca-Cola or even a martini. It is so often consumed as a part of a celebration that it frequently creates or involves memories. So the particular taste of a specific wine often becomes tied up with emotion. Countless times we’ve heard folks exclaim that they’re crazy about a particular wine and then go on to describe the associated experience—they met a great love, closed an important deal, or experienced another great milestone in life.
In the end, wine is part product and part happening. That makes it different from any other business we know. It also means that not only are we in the business of growing grapes and producing and selling wine, we’re also in the business of taking care of people and creating experiences.
Wine and Napa are about helping people enjoy their lives a little more. So that’s part of our job. In 2015 our hospitality team started The Art of the Blend—a regularly scheduled tour where, after tasting a number of different wines to blend from, guests create and bottle their own blend and take it home. They essentially get to play winemaker for a day. Now we don’t expect to find a Steve Leveque on these tours, but they’re a blast and they help make our wines approachable. Providing that kind of interactive, entertaining wine experience is a key value for us. We never want to be regarded as snobby. It’s just wine, after all. It’s meant to be fun.
We want to reflect that sense of casual fun with our marketing. In July 2015, for example, we sent out an email campaign slugged Playing Now: HALL Summer Blockbusters.
“Pop the popcorn, pour a glass & press play!” read the email. “Summer is in full swing. Kick back and stay cool with the best pairing around: HALL wine and summer movies!”
The rest of the email offered wine pairing suggestions, not for food but for the type of movie you wanted to curl up with. Our 2011 HALL Darwin Red Wine was suggested for action movies: “Just like a nonstop action film, this wine will keep you on the edge of your seat. Darwin embodies the dark, muscular, earthy interpretation of Syrah.” Romantic comedies were paired with our 2013 HALL T Bar T Ranch Sauvignon Blanc: “Playfully bright with layers of tropical and stone fruit. Our T Bar T Ranch Sauvignon Blanc is a surefire way to add freshness and energy to your favorite romantic comedy!”
We want our team to have a fun approach to wine. People work in this industry for financial reward, of course, but they also work out of passion. Most everyone here could be making more money elsewhere. Hopefully they share with our visitors the love of wine that brought them to Napa and help all involved to have a darn good time while they’re at it. That’s certainly our goal, despite having been severely tested on more than just one occasion.