The Fizz #61: Winemaker Isabella Morano is building her wine business from the ground up
Isabella and I speak about the financial and emotional struggles of starting a wine business, how she got into the wine industry, and her thoughts on natural wine.
For the 61st issue of The Fizz, I spoke to Sonoma-based winemaker Isabella Morano of Isa Wines. Isabella is part of a company of winemakers across the United States who are passionate about growing their projects in line with their values, but eschew the term “natural wine” as a signal of a moral right or wrong in their winemaking practices. This passionate winemaker just had her first big release, and is working through the building blocks of creating a wine business that sticks to her values, but also turns a profit.
In this issue, Isabella and I speak in depth about what it means to start a wine business, the struggles of making it work financially and emotionally, and where she’s going from here. We touch on how she got into the wine industry through restaurant work, working through a wildfire-heavy harvest, where she’s spending money, and so much more. I can’t wait to see where Isa Wines goes, and how Isabella thrives in the future.
Margot: You grew up in Milwaukee—was wine a part of your upbringing?
Isabella: Well, I have Italian heritage. My grandpa was Italian. My dad married this woman when I was nine or ten. When I was ten or eleven, we went to Italy for the first time with her. It left a big impression on me, the fact that their culture is surrounded by food and wine. It’s this huge cornerstone of Italian culture. I was so young, I was having sips of wine. I remember we had like a glass of champagne and I was like, this is so crazy.
From then on, I just started thinking that I needed to get out of Wisconsin. I didn’t want be here for my whole life. I've always had this forward thinking mentality ever since I was a kid. Wine was just this beautiful thing that I dreamed about. Then when I was about sixteen or seventeen, I started thinking oh—this is something that I can do. This is something I can make a life out of. The wheels started turning in my brain.
I moved to San Francisco when I was eighteen and started working in wine. I was a little bit underage—I didn't tell anybody that yet, and I was working in pizza for a while. I just needed a job. Then I had a conversation with a friend who worked at Saison in the city. I was like, how did you get into the industry? It was so hard for me to just figure out a way in. He told me that he went up to the owner of Saison and he was like, I will mop floors. I will clean whatever you want me to clean, I'll do anything just to work here. He said just tell them that, present them with a plan.
So I found David Lynch. He wrote Vino Italiano, and he opened a restaurant called St. Vincent about a year or two before I found them. I was in college and I think of myself back then and I was so unprofessional, I just walked right in and said hi, I want a job. I've never worked in wine, but I want to work for you. He hired me as a host.
Margot: That’s amazing. You knew what you wanted and you went for it. You’ve worked both on the restaurant and retail side of the business. What did you take away from being on the retail side?
Isabella: The retail part was actually the most intense and probably formative part of my education. I worked at Arlequin Wine Merchant in San Francisco, which is a really intense place to work, especially as a young person because you'll taste with four to five reps a day and they'll all bring five to ten wines. I would taste sometimes fifty wines a day and we would talk about them—what we liked and what we didn't.
At first, it gave me a little bit of an ego. I thought I had tasting down. I didn't have to study it. When I went through the Court of Master Sommeliers and they had that grid system around how you taste wine, I was so cocky that I actually failed the first time because I didn't study. I was just like, I'm great at tasting. Then I realized that's not necessarily true, or at least by their standards.
I got super into studying. When I worked in retail, I had a regular schedule where I could study in the morning and study at night. I would just study all the time. It felt really cool and important. I would write book reports and give them to my boss. We would have weekly tastings where I would meet winemakers and get to talk to them. I was starstruck every time. I'd be like, you make wine. That's amazing! I would ask them all these questions and figured out how I was going to strengthen each skill that I needed to be successful in the wine industry.
Margot: That’s awesome. From there you went on to work the harvest at Bedrock? What was that experience like? Was that the first harvest you’d worked?
Isabella: No, my first harvest was actually with Martha Stoumen. That was definitely the most important harvest I ever worked. First of all, I was still working two jobs while I was working harvest. It was intense. Martha was making wine in Richmond, California at the time. She was a one woman show and me and this other person were her first interns ever. It was so amazing to experience how she pulled it off and how she would just constantly be at the winery, trucking fruit herself from Mendocino and all over California, just figuring out how to make her business work.
She was always in a good mood too—she was never ever mean, which I'm sad to say is rare in this industry. And I mean, I get it. I'm not always pleasant when I've been working twenty hour days or pulling crazy hours, but she was just so kind and generous. That was when I started thinking this was possible for me too. Before it was just a dream—maybe one day I'll make wine when I'm semi-retired and I can figure out a way to fund it, but Martha was just doing it and she was close to my age. I was really inspired by that.
Margot: That's awesome—she has been an inspiration for so many people. When you went to Bedrock for harvest, you were harvesting in the middle of our first really scary wildfire season. What have you learned about working outside in those conditions?
Isabella: We were mostly actually in a warehouse. I was in the winery, which was lucky-ish, because we were literally in the middle of the wildfires. We were in Sonoma, and there were fires around there and a little bit west. It was a really rough harvest. It was also the first year of COVID. We were so scared. We were always masked up and had all these protocols that we had to follow, which was great, but also during harvest, it's basically impossible to not be near each other, and it's a celebratory time.
It was challenging for a lot of reasons, but I learned a lot about how to stay calm. I remember I did not feel calm ever, but the leadership there, everyone who was in charge, they would just keep it going. There was a day in California where the sun never came out. It was an orange day and it was so scary. We were in the warehouse, so it didn't really make a difference, but I have the chills right now just thinking about it. It was terrifying and we just kept going, we kept making the wine, we couldn't afford to stop.
I learned that the show must go on and you have to figure out a way to make it work no matter what. Sometimes they're gonna be really scary and adverse conditions, but as long as you stay calm as a leader, the people who are working with you will also stay calm and be able to do their job.
Margot: What advice would you give to winemakers who are bringing interns on? What would you want to see if you were an intern again?
Isabella: Especially interns coming from outside of California, for people who aren't familiar with it, I would just be upfront in the beginning and say listen, we don't know what's going to happen. There could be a time that you have to evacuate, and the air quality could get bad. It does every year and we just do our best to deal with it. But here are things you can do to make yourself feel more comfortable, like buy an air purifier. Download the apps, like I have all these apps on my phone that tell me when fires are and how close they might get to me. There are different things that you can do to educate yourself, but it's just what we live with now. I think being upfront about that is important.
Margot: That makes sense. Making sure folks know what they’re getting themselves into is crucial. What prompted you to start your own project?
Isabella: I decided to start making my own wine, honestly, because I couldn't find a job in the cellar. After that Bedrock harvest, it was so hard. I was doubting myself, thinking “can I do this?” I don't know if I can keep working on making wine. It beat me down in such a big way. I was living in Sonoma at the time, applying to all of these cellar jobs. I applied to a cider job just to be in a cellar. I really wanted to stay in the cellar, and I wasn't getting anything because the pandemic made really difficult.
I was talking to a friend one night and feeling really down and out. I was like, I don't know how I'm going to sustain this life. He said—why don't you just start? You want to keep learning how to make wine or how to get better at making wine. Why don't you put some money down and start your own thing so that you can really learn, learn the hard way. That’s something I joke with my friends about—I am always learning the hard way.
I always felt like I wanted to create something. I wanted to produce something that is mine. I wanted to be proud of something in a way that is singular to me. I mean, obviously I have a lot of help. It's never just me, but I wanted to put my name on something that I dreamed about.
Margot: How did you actually get started working on your project?
Isabella: I was supposed to harvest in San Louis Obispo and I was negotiating a little bit of wine. Those plans fell through about a week before I was supposed to move. I was talking to my friend Alexis in Santa Cruz who owns a wine shop called Soif. Almost every harvest, something falls through at the last minute, or there's some dire situation where I feel like I can't do it or I have to pivot in a big way. Alexis introduced me to Cole Thomas. He makes Madson Wines in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
I texted him and he invited me to see the winery and talk. We just had one conversation. He was like, if you want to work with us, there might be some fruit. I was interested in making Sauvignon Blanc and he said his business partner farms a vineyard in the mountains with some. We made a deal a week later and I had my fruit lined up. I had the facility, I had a job for harvest. I had everything I needed. So it was all thanks to Cole, basically. That's where I made the wines last year. Cole is moving the winery, so I decided to go back to Sonoma. I'll be making wine in Sonoma this year.
Margot: How are you getting grapes through this year?
Isabella: I'm sourcing it luckily from the same vineyard as the one I used last year. I was really happy with the final wine I just released a few months ago. I only get like a half ton. I decided I wanted to expand a little bit. I saw a vineyard in Plymouth, California, which is east of Sacramento. I'm going to work with that fruit. I wanted to make a red and that's a cool one. I'm working on getting a little bit more of a white grape. I'm hoping to make two Sauvignon Blancs.
I'm sourcing it from all over, but I love Santa Cruz a lot. The Santa Cruz Mountains have amazing potential. I'm hoping to keep that as my flagship and then expand in other ways.
Margot: You're working primarily with growers right now. Is growing your own fruit something that's interesting to you or not really?
Isabella: I don't think I'll ever own land—not in California. I think that's way too risky and stressful and there's basically no money in it. I've been meeting with a grower in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I'm thinking about getting into farming or helping someone else farm. I don't know if it's realistic for me, financially, to have my own vineyard, which is honestly okay with me.
I used to think when I was studying wine, I thought it was so much better to make your own wine from your own vineyard. I thought it made a better wine, but the longer I've been in California, the more I realize that's just not true.
Margot: It's so funny to think about how our views of what is good has been shaped by our formal wine study. I remember when I was going through the court, first learning about negociants [people who buy grapes and make wine], it was described as this less-than kind of winemaker.
Isabella: I had the same idea and I honestly never thought about it until you just said that. I thought that it was just a widely known thing that negociant fruit is worse, but it was the court! I hate the court. I don't even call myself a sommelier anymore—I had so many terrible experiences with the court and I just don't want anything to do with it. The education I got outside of it is so much more valuable.
I don't know if you feel the same way, but I almost find that going through the court was a detrimental long term experience for me because I had to spend just as much time—I will probably forever continue to do this—unlearning what I was taught, intrinsically. Do you know what I mean?
Margot: I do know what you mean—things like negociant wine is worse. The entire thing feels based on a European system that is so different from the United States. If we had a group that focused on U.S. wine, our curriculum would be completely different because there are different circumstances for folks making wine here in the states. Purchasing fruit, for example, is the standard path to winemaking. Few Americans have the money to own their own land and grow their own grapes. Why should that be considered less than ideal? It’s unrealistic here.
Isabella: Absolutely. I worked a harvest in the Loire Valley once and the people who I made wine with, I respect them deeply. They're hit with frost. They're hit with hail, they're hit with so many things in their vineyards that make it impossible for them to make enough wine, so they have to be semi-negociants. Things are changing.
I completely agree with you that having a prejudice against buying fruit is detrimental to all of us. Even the people who own land often can't farm that land in the ways that they used to. Cole’s fruit is ripening earlier and earlier, and it's almost not going to be able to produce viable wine if it keeps getting hotter. What are we supposed to do? We can't look down on negociants when that's becoming the more financially and socially responsible way to get access to grapes.
There's no moral good or evil to winemaking, but we love to ascribe that. It's interesting to ascribe a moral good to farming your own land, because it often means that you own your own land, which is like, why do you own that? Owning your own land and growing your own vines and making your own wine harkens back to all these different systems in place in America that allowed those people to do that in the first place.
Like, I love natural wine. But when I talk to people about natural wine, sometimes I get upset because the moral good thing comes into play with that. I make minimal intervention wine. I use ten parts per million of sulfur, which is basically nothing. I have these conversations all the time about how natural wine is better—folks think it’s better for you. It's just not true. There are many layers to that argument, but the moral good part about the wine industry is just something that I can't stand in many different facets.
Margot: Absolutely. Schmetterling Wine Shop opened in Vermont recently. On their about page, there's a great little section about natural wine, and I think it’s fantastic because they're specifically calling out that cult-ish vibe of, oh we only do zero zero. If it's not zero, zero, we don't touch it because it's morally bad, right? It's tainted.
In New England in particular, we have all sorts of issue, right? Fungal problems, climate issues, pest issues. Where is the line where we say this is no longer acceptable? If a person is doing their best to create good wine and has to use something once or twice in order to make sure that their grapes grow but puts all of their love and energy into that wine—is the line one extra spray? If folks are just coming up growing their grapes for the first time and learning—do we not work with them, or do we help them grow?
Isabella: Yes, and who dictates this line? Most of the time, the people who are the most vocal about the line are people who have no idea what it takes to make wine. They think they know, and coming from people who went through the court, I thought I knew everything. I thought—now I'm certified. I know how to tell someone how to make their own wine. And now, I make wine actively. I'm not comfortable telling anyone how to make wine. It's so unfair and people who focus on natural wine, they're very quick to judge—you used this or you did that and I'm not going to work with you.
That’s not fair—I'm like, bye! You realize that this is a shitty take, and if you don’t, that’s fine. There are plenty of people who also believe in moderation, in doing your best, in growing every year. I think that's all we can do. If you try your best and it turns out that you have to do something that maybe you didn't originally want to do, I'm not going to chastise you for that.
I'm hopefully going to help farm this one man’s vineyard. I talked to him and asked some questions. He sprays Roundup once a year. I asked him why he did that, because he's actually an organic fruit farmer. That's his day job—this is his family farm. He said he has a lot of experience in farming organically, but he doesn’t have the labor—the people, to help him. We’re going to work through that. Maybe they want to farm organically but can’t. You never know what it is.
Margot: As you started out fermenting, what are some things you learned about the process that you can pass on to someone who's curious to experiment?
Isabella: Fermentation does require a level of understanding that I'm still always learning. People ask me, like, how did you learn? Or when did you figure out how to make wine? I'm still figuring it out. I would tell people that the only way to learn is by doing—at least for me, or the best way to learn is by doing. It's not that scary. It's something that you can mess up and like you said, you can do it in your kitchen. You can do it in your backyard. I have friends who have made really good wines literally in their backyard.
I would tell them that it's much more approachable than you think it is once you just start doing it. I had this fear that people are going to think my wine is so bad and they're going be like, who does she think she is? I had this huge imposter syndrome, but it's just fermentation. We're just making wine and it’s delicious, it's fun, but it's not a big deal. It's just fun. We're all in this industry for fun.
Margot: I love that. That's awesome. I’d love to hear about your own project—it's your first release, right?
Isabella: Yes! My project was super tiny. My first release was only 24 cases, which was by design partially. I wanted to start small, but also that was the amount of fruit I could afford. I had such a stressful time financially getting this project going, but now that it is going, I'm really happy and excited.
A conversation I had with Laura Brennan Bissell of Inconnu really solidified these core values I have. I was just finding my way, figuring out what I wanted to do. I was on the phone with her and she asked me—what do you want your legacy to be? It was intense. I was like oh my God. She's already an amazing person—she's someone that I've idolized. I was like, this is crazy that we're having this conversation right now.
She asked—what mark do you want to make on this industry, like when it's all said and done, who do you want to be? I realized that I want to contribute something to the world that is made in a way that I agree with, in a natural-ish way that expresses my beliefs. I believe in organic farming, I think all food products ideally should be made organically for our health and for the planet. I understand there are variants to that, which can be necessary, but I want to work with sustainable and organic farmers to keep our planet alive and keep it going.
We're in a really scary time where it's becoming a possibility that our planet's not going to survive if we don't treat it well. That's my number one priority is to be a good steward of this land, and there's a big opportunity to do that in winemaking because we literally, every year, every day, we decide how we want to treat the land. It's all about the land. The morals of my business—I mean, I obviously have to make a profit. I hope to make a profitable business. I want to be able to survive off of it. But at the same time, I can't compromise.
Margot: That’s really meaningful. It sounds like sustainability is a really big aspect of your work. You just had your first release. What was that experience like and how did you go about releasing the wine?
Isabella: It's been so fun. I decided to have three parties, which is great, and also overwhelming. It went better than I could have expected. It was really, really hard to get here. I did not have a great time for honestly, a lot of it. It has been just so challenging and it beat me down in so many different ways to figure out how to make this business work. So the celebration aspect and the release has been amazing, because I’m finally sharing this wine with the people that I love and people I don't even know yet, but are enjoying it. It has been so incredible and I've felt so much support and love—it's made it all worth it essentially. I mean, besides having the wine that I'm proud of, that's obvious.
Margot: What were some of those struggles that you went through? What were some challenges?
Isabella: Finding people who I could work with or people who believed in me enough to let me make wine in their space. Cole Thomas really changed my life. I feel that I owe Cole a whole lot. Finding people whom I can work with or that would give me a chance to start my own project under their winery was difficult. Finding the funding. I thought I had enough money, but I overdrew my bank account three times last year.
I still work in service. That's my day job—I have to maintain several jobs to support myself and this business. That's been really hard. Figuring out how to make enough time for the business while also just trying to survive. I struggled financially and emotionally, and socially finding time for the people I love and finding time to do everything at once. That's been really challenging. Luckily I have a lot of help, but for a while I didn't have much help.I was trying to do it on my own and I thought I could do it on my own. It turns out that's just not possible and I don't really want to.
Margot: Did you find investors or get some other type of financial backing?
Isabella: No, not yet. It's all been self-funded. I thought making a small amount of wine would be easy, which is laughable because it's never easy, but it was mostly licensing and getting my permits to sell wine that really like broke the bank. I'm still actually paying for it. It's been almost two years now and I have had a few meetings set up for people who want to invest a little bit of money, but I'm still exploring that idea because I don't want to have too many people involved. I think that would be detrimental to the business. I want to make sure that I can still make wines that I believe in and that I want to make, but I am open to investment.
Margot: How can people support you right now? Like what do you need? Do you need like stand investment? Are you looking for a more permanent space? Are you looking for like material or tanks or whatever?
Isabella: Thank you for asking that. I'm always open to investment, if people want to talk to me about that. I actually sell key chains on my website. I make these cork key chains that are kind of a side project, plus just profit for extra material that I have. In the future, just buying the wine. It feels so great to be supported in that way. It's mostly just the financing of the project. There's a custom crush that I'm working with that I have to pay for.
Margot: How does that custom crush arrangement work?
Isabella: Last year, I guess it was technically a custom crush agreement, but I was working with Cole, so it felt less like an actual custom crush. That was the first time I'd worked at them as an intern, but this is my first time being a client. I'll be working with my friend Jack Sporer at Magnolia Wine Services. You are allowed to be as involved in the process as you want, or as hands off, but I'm the type where I would rather physically be there doing it. Maybe I'll need a little bit of help, but I'm making about three tons this year, so I can't imagine I'll need much.
Basically he provides all of the tanks, the press, they provide the pumps. They provide sulfur if you need it, most things. We have to buy insurance, that's necessary in California. We provide our own barrels and racks and those types of things, and obviously the grapes. It's a really good deal—it’s like paying rent on an apartment because I can't afford any of that on my own.
Margot: How much does it cost?
Isabella: I’d need to look at our agreement, but I believe in Sonoma, it's usually around $2-3000 per ton, typically. I think at Magnolia it's about $2,500-2,700 per ton, but I would need to verify that.
Margot: That must make you really think about how you price your wine too—if you have to pay custom crush prices.
Isabella: Pricing wine is really a difficult thing to think through. It's something I'm really having a hard time with. My wine is way too expensive, frankly, in my opinion. I wanted to make it half the price, but I'm not even breaking even with the amount that I'm charging it for.
Margot: Where can folks find your wines right now? Are they available?
Isabella: It's sold out right now, but I'm making more in a few weeks. That's what I've been telling everyone. There will be more wine a lot sooner than you think. I do have a website. As of right now, there is wine in L.A. People can follow me on Instagram—that’s where I’ll be talking about future releases.
Margot: Awesome, I can’t wait to try them!
You can support Isabella by purchasing her wines when they’re available on her website. Follow her on Instagram to stay up to date on her releases.
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