We recently connected with Sam Lando and have shared our conversation below.
Sam, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?
After 20 years of working in the wine business…I thought I knew every possible pitfall and risk associated with starting/growing a winery/wine brand. Boy, was I wrong. As it turns out, during a four year stretch from 2017-2020, those of us in Northern CA would see the most calamitous activities since Prohibition. It’s been the fight of our lives…and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
I didn’t start our business having the support of a family trust or making my fortune in another industry. I liquidated my meager 401k to purchase 3 tons of pinot and 8 used barrels in the summer of 2012. I knew it was going to be tough, but didn’t expect the full force of Mather Nature to thrash us about hence, thrash is about as much and as often as she did. Our story is about perseverance and resilience. And the unwavering determination to create exceptional pinot noirs and chardonnays – the pursuit of the American Dream against the odds!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Sam Lando developed an interest in wine in the early 1990’s during his college years in Sonoma County and was recruited into the wine business just prior to graduation. He started his career working for some of the large global wine producers, and soon identified his true love of working with and enjoying Pinot Noir.
While his emphasis was sales and marketing, he realized early on the need to understand as much as possible about differing winemaking and viticulture techniques. After working with and becoming friends with some of the best new world wine producers, it was a natural evolution to begin hobby winemaking (and taking extension classes in winemaking and viticulture).
After working for seventeen years for great wine brands & wonderful colleagues (lastly, a five year stint with Kosta Browne Winery), he departed at the end of 2012. His work with dear friends was a deeply rewarding experience…personally and professionally. They worked (and played) so well together because of a love and passion for what they did. In addition to their shared affliction for Pinot, they enjoyed the company of great people and food.
And here we are…eleven glorious years on our own. We have a few things that separate us from others in our space. While we don’t own a winery, nor do we own our own vineyards, but we work hand-in-hand with our growers and vineyard management teams to ensure the blocks (our designated area of grapes) are grown to the standards we need to produce expectational pinot noirs and chardonnays. It takes a huge amount of time and a good amount of miles piled on to the vehicle, but the end result is worth it. It’s cliché, but its true. The most important part of what we do is to ensure that we receive incredible quality grapes. The next step is to not f*&k it up when we get them into the winery. The other key aspect here, is making the right picking decision. I want our grapes mature (ripe, but not over ripe). This allows us to make intense, fruit forward, and yet, elegant wines.
Secondly, we don’t cut corners or sacrifice any aspect to produce the highest quality wines. And our customers have come to know us in this manner. We only sell our wines twice a year and mostly to a mailing list of customers (www.landowines.com). It’s not a wine club, it’s what we call an allocation offering. Our active mailing list friends who have been regularly purchasing directly from us receive a specific number of bottles of each wines we offer per release based on their prior purchase history. I never talk about “points or ratings”. If folks want to know how we rate, they can always check with the Wine Spectator. But most folks have come to know, we don’t put anything average in the bottle. While we could charge much for for the wines we produce, they’re limited and I try to keep the pricing as constant as possible as a reward to our loyal customers. I like to think that we are considered in a category called, “affordable luxury”.
While the aforementioned aspects have been the driving force of what we do, Mother Nature has been a persistent and challenging force for us. In 2017, we were one of only a handful of wineries to be badly damaged from the Tubbs fire in northern Sonoma County. We lost our entire 2016 vintage of wines in the fire. Which arguably, is like hitting a rest button on your business. I couldn’t go around the corner and buy more grapes to make up what we lost. That event significantly disrupted our our cashflow for 2018, 2019 and 2020. And just as we were starting to see some daylight in 2020, just before harvest that vintage, we had an extreme series of fires that rendered many of the grapes unusable to smoke taint. Taking another drumming, we lost 88% of our harvest to smoke taint. Most folks would have quit and moved on to something else…that’s not who we are.
Bear in mind, this isn’t a sob story. Insurance helped a little, but didn’t come close to compensating us for the losses. We improvised, adapted, and pushed to over come. For me, I doubled down on our relationships. In times of need, I’ve always felt that helping those less fortunate has always come back ten fold. We leveraged loans to help purchase additional grapes in the outlying years and developed special wines & created new/different events where we could tell our unique story (the Sonoma Social Distance Wine Tour, the Phoenix Blends, Sauves La Vie, Proprietor’s Reserve, and Truth & Valor). All of which helped us build new relationships and move our brand forward.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
As the pandemic locked everything down, we needed to figure out how to keep moving our business forward. While we don’t have a tasting room and we only sell our wines twice a year, I am normally doing 10-15 major charity wine auction events across the country. This serves a few purposes. While I can ‘t write a check for 20k to these charity/causes, by participating, donating wines, and usually building substantial or elaborate auction lots, we usually help these organizations raise $30,000-$200,000. It’s been incredibly rewarding. Additionally, these events have allowed us to meet wonderful folks across the country who coincidentally, usually enjoy the quality of wines we produce and then join our mailing list.
So, the pandemic locks us down…what now? How do we keep growing our mailing list customer base to match our production of wines? Well, I decided to purchase a 25’ travel trailer, load it with the wife, kids, dog and 20 cases of wines and set off to do outdoor events on the west coast. It took a few months of planning, but we departed on the first run in May of 2020 and did outdoor tasting events in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. We had 5 other wines brands that joined us through the summer. We called this roving event, “The Sonoma Social Distance Wine Tour”. All in all, we drove over 18,000 miles from May – Aug and did 42 outdoor events. To say it was crazy is an understatement. We met an incredible amount of wonderful folks who are now great supporters of winery/wines.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Yeah, boy. I can write a book on this one. We started with liquidating my 401k. After taxes, it wasn’t much, but it was enough to get started. That following year, I built our business plan/model and we brought on 8 friends an family investors and raised around 700k. Traditional banking has been up and down. We had a line of credit through 2017. Then rolled that line of credit debt it into an SBA loan which is currently strangling us with the interest rate increases.
We’re surviving, but is has been painful chasing cashflow each year (due to the losses we’ve experienced from the fires). Making luxury focused wines is not for the faint of heart. I have seen our cost of goods increase from 2017 by 38% to 65%. So much so, we are in the midst of pursuing a new capital raise so we can double our production for the next few years. I’m not thrilled at the idea of parting with more of my personal equity, but we need to grow. And the traditional banking community has been zero help on this front.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.landowines.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lando_wines/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sam.lando.9
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-lando-4082333/
- Twitter: @LandoWines
Image Credits
Sam & Jen Lando