The Fizz #58: Carrie Wynkoop of Cellar 503 is dedicated to running a wine club the right way
In this issue, Carrie and I consider what it means to be a reputable wine club, storytelling through wine, and her love of often overlooked Southern Oregon.
I often get requests from friends and family about which wine clubs they should join, and I have little to tell them. Usually I point folks in the direction of joining winemakers’ wine clubs, which allow you to really get to know one specific winemaker. But what about wine clubs that help you explore different wine regions, wineries, and styles? There’s very little transparency in wine clubs. It’s hard to tell how much people are buying wine for, whether wine is stored correctly, how wines are chosen and why. Are these wine clubs just in it for the money? Do they have a passion for wine, helping tell real peoples’ stories?
For the 58th The Fizz issue, I spoke with Carrie Wynkoop, founder of Cellar 503, a wine club that focuses only on Oregon wines from smaller wineries. In the eight years of Cellar 503’s existence, Carrie has met with hundreds of winemakers, visited hundreds of wineries, and puts together a wine club that I can finally recommend. In this issue, we talk about shady wine club practices, why she loves Southern Oregon wine, and her ability to weave storytelling into her wine club.
Margot: How’d you find yourself in the wine industry?
Carrie: I actually do not have a background in wine or even in hospitality, although I did sell wine for Cost Plus when I was barely twenty-one, right outside of college, but I had no idea what I was doing. My husband and I own another business—we do political consulting for democratic candidates and nonprofits all over the country. We've been doing that for more than twenty years now, but it was always his passion mostly. About ten years ago, I started taking wine classes for fun at The Wine and Spirit Archive in Portland.
I took a class and was totally hooked. I started taking certification courses, mostly for fun. I'd never had really any intention of taking it any further than that, but about halfway through my first WSET class, it was clear I got the wine bug. I wanted do something in the wine industry, but it took me a long time to figure out what that was. I knew that I didn't know enough to be a winemaker. We had a young son at the time, so I wasn't going to work in restaurants, and I didn't really want to do retail.
There was one time when I said to my husband that I just want someone to send me wine from small producers all over the state to my door. That way I don't have to do the research to find them. Every time we went on vacation, we ended up driving in the middle of nowhere and finding these really great wineries, and I just wanted it all to come to me. He Googled that, trying to find it for me as a gift and said well, there's nothing like that. No one's doing that. You should do it. I was like, you're crazy. But it stuck with me, and six months later, Cellar 503 was born and it’ll be eight years in December.
Margot: Wow, that’s great. You followed your heart. How did you end up starting the wine club? I think often people don't realize the amount of work and detail that goes into a great wine club. What were those first days like when you were said alright, I'm going to do this?
Carrie: The reason why I started Cellar was because I wanted to tell the stories of the winemakers. Every time we go visit a winery, I am constantly amazed at the crazy stories of these winemakers and how they got into this business. One of my favorite wineries is Corey at Jackalope Wine Cellars and we call him the Craigslist winemaker because he quit his engineering job and said he would do literally any job for a day that he found on Craigslist. He found a job in the wine industry and the rest is history.
I knew that I wanted to tell peoples’ stories and I also knew it was really important to me that we talk about the entire state and not just The Willamette Valley, because I'm super passionate about Southern Oregon wine. As I started this business, I thought that was important to put some guidelines about what I was going to do. One, because it's my passion and two—you're right, it is a crazy amount of work. I needed to have some sort of framework.
I work with wineries making less than 10,000 cases. In Oregon, that's about 85% of wineries, so that’s not hard. I wanted to focus on the smaller wineries who don't have as much of an opportunity to get the word out about them. They have to be in Oregon—for me that means they're based here. Their license is in Oregon, but they might be getting grapes from Washington. There are so many, especially here in Portland, urban wineries, for example. It's cheaper and easier for them to get grapes from Washington. Once I had that framework, I just went out and tasted lots and lots of wine.
Once I was sure that I wanted to feature them, I would go back and contact them and see if I could buy their wine. Once the word started getting out that there was an Oregon only wine club, now I would say most folks approach me to be in the club rather than vice versa, and I make appointments and go in and hear their story. I meet every winemaker. I visit every winery. It's really important to me to do that hands on work.
Then came the technology piece—all the crazy shipping laws and figuring out boxes and how do I get an account with FedEx?
Margot: How did those people respond in the beginning? When you came up to them and said hey, I'm starting a wine club, do you want to be a part of it?
Carrie: Fortunately most of them were great. Some of them, I think probably were like, eh, who is this person? Most people said cool, I'll sell you wine, you know? The ones who didn't, I never understand that. I remember being really, really intimidated to reach out to one of my favorite winemakers down in Southern Oregon. I remember calling him up and saying here's what I'm doing, can I get some wine from you? He just asked—are you asking me to donate the wine? I said, no, I'm going to buy it from you. And he said “why wouldn't I sell you wine”? Once I had a couple of months of shipments in where I was doing really well, with reputable winemakers, it made it a lot easier to get other people signed on.
Margot: That’s great—it sounds like folks were pretty accepting of the idea from the start. How does the pricing structure work? Do you purchase at some sort of discount from the winemaker and then sell the wines at a price that makes sense for you?
Carrie: Yes, because I'm a retailer, I can purchase with the wholesale discount. That changes from state to state, but here in Oregon, it's 30% off. Sometimes winemakers will give me better deals on that, but I never ask. First of all, it’s illegal to ask, but also—we all have to make money in this business.
I built my business model on being able to afford a certain price point of wine, and there are definitely some skeezy wine clubs out there who go to wineries and say “I'll take ten cases of that, but you have to give it to me at this price”, and that’s not good. They have terrible reputations, the winemakers don't like them, and that is not why I got into this.
Margot: I'm really glad you brought that up because it's very interesting. A lot of folks ask me for a good wine club to join, and mostly I tell them to join the winemaker's wine club if they have one. Other than that, I don't really know what to say because there's not a lot of transparency around pricing or how they're sourcing bottles, how they're storing bottles, how they're working with winemakers. What makes a good reputable wine club?
Carrie: I have a really hard time with a lot of those big national wine clubs for those exact reasons. I joined every club out there when we were doing our research for Cellar 503. You'd get your bottle in the mail and look it up, and you find out that anywhere in town you could get that bottle for eight bucks. They're selling it to me for $25. They were coming up with the bottom of the dregs of some of these vintages, some were winemakers trying to get rid of stuff that wasn’t good quality.
These big wine clubs come in and get it at discount prices. Some of these wine clubs say that they are wine clubs, but they are actually wineries. They're actually making all of their own wine. They're not supporting small producers and they're not supporting wineries around the world or even here in the United States—but that's not what their marketing says.
Those things drive me nuts because I got into this to support these small winemakers who are doing these awesome things and to sell a good product at a good price that is going to help provide a sustainable living to these wineries and a great product to people all over the country who don't have access to it. Here are these giant monster wine clubs who are totally taking advantage of the wineries.
The other piece about it that drives me nuts is that for me, to discover and explore is the best thing about wine. Every bottle is so different—we don't all eat chicken nuggets for every meal, every day of the week. Why do you want to drink the same wine all the time? With many of the bigger wine clubs, you fill out some sort of survey and it's some algorithm that puts all of your information into a box and spits out, oh, you really like Cabernet Sauvignon. Now all they're sending you is Cabernet Sauvignon. Well, if you don't get to try Cabernet Franc, how do you know that you like that even better? That's what drives me insane about those wine clubs.
Here, I pick two different reds and two different whites each from a different producer every month and you get what you get and you hopefully love all of it and learn something new and you get to try all sorts of different things.
Margot: That's wild! So some of these wine clubs are producing their own wine and then just putting it under different labels, sending it away? [Carrie nods] Wow. That is bananas.
Carrie: It's wild. Yes. There's definitely some shady practices going on there.
Margot: Interesting. When you go visit the wineries, what kinds of questions do you ask the winemakers when you're there?
Carrie: I’m really trying to understand why they got into this business, what their journey's been like, understanding what their point of view is within the industry. Are they super “natural”? Are they much more traditional? Do they like all the crazy weird grapes out there? Are they just doing Pinot and Chardonnay? Are they experimenting with different vessels or different fermentation techniques? I want that story—there's very rarely a winery that I go to where I don't like at least one bottle. It’s very rare, but definitely has happened, where I go to a winery and I say there's no story here. You're some rich guys who were bored and decided to plant some grapes and that's fine, but that's just not who I want to tell that story about.
Margot: Do you ever ask about their teams or their labor practices, things like that?
Carrie: That's a great question. I would say the vast majority of the folks that I work with are so small—it is just the winemaker. Now, obviously there are vineyard workers out there who are picking the grapes. When I'm visiting a larger place or a place that is actually on a piece of property, we will definitely talk about it.
One of the organizations I love to support is called the Virginia Garcia Memorial Foundation. They provide culturally specific healthcare for migrant farm workers, most of whom are the folks picking the grapes. I often will bring it up to winemakers. They come out and provide healthcare for your workers and it's free to you. I would say this topic is definitely not talked about enough in the industry.
There are some cool organizations, AHIVOY for example—they provide education for migrant farmworkers to work their way up in the wine industry. Some folks are doing internship programs, things like that. We're making progress just a little late.
Margot: You mentioned that Southern Oregon wine is an interesting thing for you. I have heard very little about Southern Oregon wine. What's unique about that area, and why does that inspire you?
Carrie: It's at the same latitude as Rioja in Spain! It is completely different than the Willamette Valley. They get tons of sunshine, we get tons of rain, so they're growing vastly different grapes. They're really making a name for themselves with Tempranillo and some other Spanish varietals. Also, and this is crazy, I learned this when I was teaching a class last year—they have the widest diurnal shift in the entire world in Southern Oregon. Which is totally wild. It gets really hot in the day, but it cools off really fast at night. They get long hang times and gorgeously complex wines.
What is even more interesting to me is that it's a little bit still the Wild West down there. Especially ten years ago when I started this—there's no traffic. It's beautiful. You almost always get to meet the winemaker. Tastings are free or like five bucks. When my son was really little we would go down there and go tasting, they would bring me the taste out to the car while I was sitting there with him while he was asleep. Totally illegal, but you know—good people and cool and interesting and different wines and totally out of the rat race that The Willamette Valley can be.
What's interesting about Southern Oregon right now is that they are in a transition phase. A lot of the original families who started growing grapes and making wine down there, they're getting ready to retire. There's a lot of thought around what's the next generation going to look like? Is it kids taking over for parents or is it new people coming in from California? It’s interesting to watch.
Margot: That is interesting—I’ve heard of a lot of consolidation in California and Oregon as well, I wonder if places are going to be bought up soon. You're in a cool position in the industry because you're able to see the Oregon wine industry from this holistic overview. How have you seen the local industry change and where do you see it grow going?
Carrie: In my lifetime in the industry, you can definitely see the evolution of different varietals. Chardonnay in Oregon has really taken off and is becoming really well known. That's been really fun to watch and see if there is an Oregon style going to actually evolve or if it's just continuing to be whatever the winemaker wants. Watching different regions has been interesting. When I started, there were 400 wineries in this state and now there are over 900—in just eight years, which is insane.
Margot: What do you attribute that to?
Carrie: People know about Oregon. With most of the winemakers that I speak to, their first passion was Pinot Noir, whether or not they chose to make it for all sorts of economic reasons. Almost all of them will say that was their first love. They decided they wanted to explore it, or they're coming from a more expensive place where they wanted to be in the wine industry, but couldn't afford to.
We've gone from 18 AVAs [American Viticultural Areas] to 23 now, with the newest one just this week. It means more recognition and more specificity and for some consumers that's good—for some, it doesn't really matter. One thing that hasn't changed generally is the feeling of collaboration in the state of Oregon, which from what I've heard from other people outside is really unusual. This is definitely a place where the rising tide lifts all boats. I can't tell you the number of stories where folks tell me, my press broke and I called the guy down the street and he said just bring your grapes over and I'll clean out my press for you, or my tractor breaks down and his next door neighbor helps him finish the harvest.
We've had two or three winemakers pass away in my time, some of them in the middle of harvest and other winemakers immediately hop in to help. Even as we grow and get more recognition here in Oregon, I love that that still remains.
Margot: That’s really great to hear. Thank you so much for your time, Carrie!
You can support Carrie by signing up for her wine club at Cellar 503 and following her on Instagram. If you’re local to Portland, you can stop by the Cellar 503 tasting room.
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