Winemaker - Rutherford Hill Winery
Job Description:
Position Summary:
The Rutherford Hill Winemaker is responsible for the production and promotion of all the Rutherford Hill brand wines made at Rutherford Hill working in close partnership with the Operations, Marketing and PR teams establishing and executing the strategic vision and direction for the wines and brand. The winemaker will be the face of Rutherford Hill wines communicating and advocating the winery's wine growing philosophy to internal and external stakeholders including, but not limited to consumers, trade, media, club members, employees and critics actively promoting Rutherford Hill philosophy, brands and heritage.
Duties & Responsibilities:
- Dynamically represent and support the RH brand in the commercial market in partnership with Marketing and Sales.
- Collaborate with the Sales and DTC to educate sales force and staff, respectively, to the qualities, attributes and unique characteristics of the wines.
- Represent the winery with media, trade and consumers as the face of the brand. Work with Marketing on Public Relations campaigns.
- Partner with Marketing to define brand standards and expectations for quality, style, packaging, price-points, and product mix.
- Travel as needed to support specific market activities related to brand promotion, distributor meetings, trade events, winemaker dinners and market work with the sales force. (estimated 20% travel)
- Application of the best in winemaking technology and technique in creation of high quality, luxury wines.
- Active participation in monthly winery planning sessions, and related inventory and cost management activities.
- Demonstrate initiative in leveraging cost and quality improvements in winery operations.
- Maintain records as required for the purpose of meeting government and internal compliance requirements.
- Develop and maintain strong and collaborative relationships with both internal and external stakeholders.
- Monitor the condition of all wines in order to maintain the highest wine quality prevent spoilage.
- Assist in development of the product mix and grape needs for coming season.
- Work in close partnership with Winemaking, direct to consumer and commercial sales groups to project the desired product mix based on the past years sales.
- Collaborate with the winemaking team to plan blends and products to be produced to meet the projections of the sales group.
Employee Management and Leadership Responsibilities:
- Collaborate with the Supply Chain Winemaking and productions teams at Rutherford team to help set direction.
- Actively engage with Marketing, DTC and Salesto work through important business opportunities and initiatives
- Continually look to innovate winemaking and production and adapt to changing market conditions and the full potential of the vineyards.
- Apply strong business acumen and project management skills in driving change initiatives.
- Coach/mentor team members and provide regular feedback on performance and development.
Leadership Capabilities & Behaviors:
- Deliver Results: Holds self and team accountable to follow through on commitments Achieve KPIs: Clear expectations and focus on accomplishment of goals
- Business Acumen: Knowledge, skills, experience and logical thinking to assess and implement decisions to achieve company objectives
- Data Driven leads to insights: Accurate and deep understanding from data that leads to action
- Knowledge Product, Brand, Categories, Markets, Distributor, Competitor: Strong and deep understanding of the different aspects of the business
- Function expertise: Strong knowledge, understanding and application in functional area
- Productivity-Able to identify the KPIs relevant to processes and their correlation to the business objectives. Aware of the current state of each KPI relevant to their area. Project definition, monitoring and control. Standardize operation procedures by measuring the work and defining process and plans. Troubleshooting, applying RCPS (root cause problem solving) tools.
- Quality- Good understanding of the process involved in producing high quality grapes and wines.
- Sustainability- Ability to make the business case for environmental sustainability. Challenges unsustainable practices in a productive way. Can translate environmental risks into local action.
- Safety- Can lead safety inspections, risk assessments, incident investigation and Root Cause analysis. Recognizes positive safety behaviors and positively promotes the creation of a learning organization.
- Strategic Thinking: Understanding of the key drivers of the business and foresight into what the future could become
- Growth mindset: Perseverant, sees challenges as opportunities, drives continuous improvement and believes in accelerating potential
- Problem solving: Identifies issues, considers stakeholder needs, explores possibilities, recommends and implements win-win solutions in collaboration with others
- Decision making: Weighs the cost/benefit and ROI of potential choices when making recommendations and moving forward with plans to implement ideas
- Prioritization: Manages multiple priorities and determines the most urgent and important tasks to implement first
- Leading Others: Knowledge, skills, competence, self-awareness and understanding of how to engage and motivate people
- Influencing: Leads by example as a positive role model. Presents ideas with facts and data to persuade others
- Coach & Develop: Provides honest, respectful ongoing feedback and support to colleagues in the moment. Knows team members aspirations and provides opportunity for learning and growth. Inclusive, values diversity & asks for feedback.
- Celebrate Success: Recognizes and appreciates self and team accomplishments and contributions in a creative and thoughtful way
Inspire: Creates confidence and motivation in others to achieve greatness and be their best
Know your team / stakeholders: Builds strong, respectful and trusting relationships with team members and stakeholders
Build consensus & buy in: Values and gathers input and considers best interests of all parties when making decisions
Ownership: Has a stake in the success of the business
Total commitment: Loyal and dedicated to Terlato and the Team
Desire to Win: Competitive drive to break through and exceed high goals, strong initiative and self-motivation for success
Takes responsibility: Dependable and will admit and learn from mistakes
Collaboration: Values diversity, teamwork and other perspectives to achieve the best results
One Terlato Team: Team player who believes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts
Clear communication: Active listener who is concise and succinct in communication
Positive Intent: Assumes everyone is striving to do whats best for the company and the business
Required Qualifications and experience:
- Ten+ years of recognized high-quality winemaking experience
- Bachelor of Science in related field or equivalent experience
- Recognizes the uniqueness and quality of our iconic vineyards and able to put the vineyards first as the cornerstone of our successes and wine quality.
- Believes and subscribes to the idea and philosophy that great wines are the products of great vineyards.
- Advanced understanding of the process involved in producing high quality grapes and wines.
- Understands, willing to utilize and able to balance the best of old world and new wine-making techniques and protocols as applied to wines.
- Comfortable experimenting and launching trials to create improvements in wine quality
- Team Player above all.
- Honesty, integrity, tenacity and resourcefulness
- Positive outlook. The successful candidate will possess a positive outlook - one which allows the person to be confident, humble, open-minded and solution driven