Applied for a "Warm Body" Job 1995. Now He Runs a World-Class Winery Pt. 1-9

The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast

Justin Ennis shares his journey from a high school graduate with no career plan to Senior Director of Winemaking at Joseph Phelps Vineyards,

Key takeaways

• Winemaking can be a gateway to experiencing diverse cultures through international internships and agricultural exchange programs.
• Hands-on experience and on-the-job learning are foundational to building a successful career in wine, even without formal education.

Main topics

• Career beginnings in winemaking
• International agricultural exchange programs (CAEP)

Notable quotes

"I was just totally in love with it. And what I was most attracted to... was all the people that I met from around the world."

Conclusion

Justin Ennis's story illustrates how a simple internship can lead to a

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:02) Welcome to the best five-minute wine podcast with Forrest Kelly. Speaker 1 (0:14) 18 years old, fresh out of high school, expecting hard labor. What our guest got instead was a passport to the world. One harvest at a time. Hi, I'm Speaker 2 (0:25) Justin Ennis. I am Senior Director of Winemaking for Joseph Phelps Vineyard in Sonoma County. And I'm responsible for our Sonoma Coast wines with the Freestone brand. I've been with Joseph Phelps Freestone for 20 years. Speaker 1 (0:38) What happened to your upbringing or things that said, I'm digging this wine thing? Speaker 2 (0:43) So for me, I was born and raised in Sonoma County. So wine in the vineyards and wineries was always around in kind of in the peripheral vision of my life. My grandfather on my dad's side was very much a wine lover and loved to have wine on the table. And so I was... And then on my mother's side, they lived up in Hillsburg in the heart of Russian River. They had an old vineyard on their property, an old field planted vineyard from the early days. So it was always kind of around me. I never really considered it as a career until my stepfather, actually, he was in the wine industry working for Kennel Jackson at a place called Hartford Court, or now it's called Hartford Family Winery. And he's in facilities and he's like, hey, look, you know, you're out of high school. They pay really well. You can start as a harvest intern. You know, you work these long hours and, you know, you help make the wine. And I was like, OK, sure, I'll try that. And so my first vintage was in 1995 at Hartford Court. Dan Goldfield was the winemaker and I completely fell into it by luck. And that very first year, I was just totally in love with it. And what I was most attracted to, because I was only 18 years old, or I guess, you know, as Harvest went on, I turned 19, was all the people that I met from around the world. So that very first Harvest, we worked with two gentlemen from Portugal, two guys from France, a woman from Australia. And it really quickly became apparent to me that... the camaraderie, the teamwork, the people, it really opened my eyes to the greater wider world. You know, I think that Sonoma County is fairly insular. So it was eye-opening to me that like I could do a job like harvest or winemaking and I could go see the world. And so that's essentially how I got into it. Speaker 1 (2:49) If you're working in the field, how are you coming in contact? You know, how do you get from? Speaker 2 (2:53) Yes. We were hired as cellar interns or cellar help. So we weren't working out in the actual vineyard itself. We were working within the winery, bringing as fruit came in to process it and put it in the tank to ferment it, to turn it into wine. I just happened to apply for the job. They need warm bodies. They teach you everything you need to learn, you know, like power washing and cleaning. And this is not very glamorous, like the early work. you, I just learned on the job. And so that's how I met them. So all these foreigners would apply through for a visa and they would apply for an ag visa. There's a group called CAEP, which is a agriculture exchange program that's run out of the United States. And a lot of people still to this day utilize CAEP to get their visas like I did later in my career when I went to New Zealand. to help me secure my visa so that you can go and do this agriculture exchange and work. And so they were in the United States for that reason, to learn winemaking in the United States for a season, for a harvest. So we were cellar rats. And that meant we processed fruit. We would do punchdowns. We would do barrel cleaning. All the Speaker 1 (4:12) stuff that it takes to make wine. Speaker 2 (4:15) You know, I don't know when, where the exchange... kind of program started, but it's, um, there's technique and processes that are used in winemaking all over the world. I think it's just, uh, was born out of wanting to share knowledge and also show, show interns and foreigners what we do here, uh, where when you go there, you learn their processes and their techniques. and those kind of things. And some of those techniques are very universal, but then there's certain things that you'll pick up, nuances. I'm trying to think of an example. It might be a new piece of equipment or some sort of modernization of something that you see somewhere else. And you're like, huh, I could apply that at my winery or at my business. And so it's mainly to just nurture more knowledge growth and sharing of information and skills. is where I think it really came out of. We absolutely used domestic local help as well. It was a mix of local as well as foreign helpers and interns that worked in the cellar in the early days. And the thing is, is that the work, there's so much work that you have to increase your labor pool for usually a short amount of time, which is harvest, which is, depending on where you're at, is August to October. So there's those. blocks a month where you have to have round the clock monitoring of fermentations. You got fruit coming in at all hours of the day and sometimes the night. So you have to have an overlap of people and able bodies and supervision and all that to get the job done. Speaker 1 (5:51) What an amazing thing to go through at 18, too, because, you know, not necessarily that it's a bad thing or a good thing, but we hear that America is the best at everything. But then as you broaden your horizons out and you get more experiences and you're thinking, OK, that needs to be adjusted a little bit because there's some techniques that they've been using for hundreds of years that's better than what we're doing here. Speaker 2 (6:13) Oh, absolutely. I mean, just look at, you know, just look at France and. Europe that have, you know, made compared old world to new world, right? They've been making wine for substantially longer. I think it's pretty egotistical to think that we do the best with their best at everything. For me in the early days, though, what was what I latched on to was the cultural aspect of like being exposed to these individuals from different parts of the planet and like different accents, different. languages, different mannerisms, just learning to, I mean, not learning, just realizing that there's a big world out there and I've only seen a small tiny bit of it. It Speaker 1 (6:59) definitely is real. And it's that cliche of rising tides raise all boats. And Speaker 2 (7:04) that's kind of how I like to look at it. I like that. Even in my winery now that we can still get this influx of young, eager people that want to work in the wine industry. And we get this opportunity to, you know, leave an impression on them. Sometimes negative, sometimes hopefully more positive than negative. But it gives them, they get exposure to things that maybe they wouldn't get at home because maybe the winery they work for doesn't do as many grapes. They may not have as many vineyards planted. They may not have the same kind of budget. So I think when you intern and you go see other parts of the world or you intern and you work at different wineries, you kind of get focused on what avenue of the business you may or may not want to work in. And you also learn the right way to do things and you'll learn the wrong way to do things. So I just think it's a very unique way for people to come up in the industry and figure out if winemaking is what they want to do. Because there's more than just winemaking. There's wine sales, there's hospitality, there's farming. So you may gravitate to one of those areas more than the other. And I think when you intern, whether it's your vineyard intern or a winery intern or a marketing intern, it's a way for you to test the waters and see if that's really what you want to do. Speaker 1 (8:28) So then you went from washing. And doing that whole thing, you're interning there, and then you realized, okay, I want to do this. What did you have to do to get there? You went to school? Speaker 2 (8:39) Yeah, so I was raised in the wine industry. I didn't go to like a four-year university for a winemaking degree, so I don't have a winemaking degree. Everything I've done has been learned on the job and through hard work and dedication. Speaker 2 (8:58) I started at 19 and I stayed in the wine industry essentially full time. I'm almost 50 now. I have 32 harvests under my belt. And so I really learned from the ground up. So yes, you start with all the dirty tasks like cleaning tanks, cleaning the floors, cleaning drains, cleaning barrels. But as you learn that stuff and you learn techniques and processes... You just naturally, I was able to progress in my career and take on more responsibility. So maybe, you know, the next year I helped run the crush pad or, you know, the next year I learned how to organize the barrel room and organize putting wine to barrel. So it's just step by step. You learn how to operate equipment, whether it's pumps or a forklift or a crane to dump gondolas. There's all this hands on training and learning that you got to do that all equates to. how you're going to organize and run a winery down the road, if that's what you want to do. And I've always said, I think that what's hugely important for interns is to try to focus on the highest quality producers possible so that you are learning techniques from, you know, hopefully what you think are the best producers. And so I just, I've been fortunate enough in my career that I worked at very high quality oriented. wineries that were really shooting to make very high quality wine, not just not pump out volume, if that makes sense. Speaker 1 (10:27) Now you mentioned, uh,