We recently connected with Carla Barroso and have shared our conversation below.

Carla, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

Miles Garrett Wines is a small family run winery producing our own grapes and olives. Our team is made up of family, friends, employees and volunteers. The Peach Tree Lane Vineyard is our Home. We moved back there full time from the coast – one hour away- when COVID-19 started in March 2020 and I, Carla, was pregnant with our first daughter together with Miles, Gala. I was teaching Spanish at a local school and also involved in the expansion of our wine business but the new situation forced us to move away to where back then it was our working space.
Isolation felt good for us and we were able to focus more on our growing family and our business.
Miles and I have been always a great team where he is in charge of the vineyard and the winemaking while I run the business and do everything that includes a computer basically. We do everything in house; labels, website, local sales and we mostly get help and support from people for the vineyard work.
It is not easy for us to leave as a family on vacation for more than a few days since we not always have someone at the vineyard who can help is with the animals (pig, donkeys, chickens, ducks and dogs), vines, maintenance etc. but we love to take our van and do weekend trips to the surrounding rivers and campgrounds and we have been trying to make a trip to Spain once a year to visit family since I, Carla, am originally from the Basque Country, Spain.
Both daughters, Bella who is 21 and Gala who is almost 3 have been involved in many of the different jobs, activities, events and visits related to our business (olive picking day, bottling, pouring events, meetings with distributors…). We are like a pack that goes together everywhere, or most places.
We are loving to raise our daughter Gala in the vineyard where she gets to ride quads, feed animals, harvest on the veggie garden etc. while she is also brought into the harvest scene where every day we go, see and sometimes “support” our people.
For the last three years my parents have been coming from Spain to support us while harvest where my mom is mostly helping me with Gala and my dad is helping Miles and the crew out in the vineyard with mechanical and electrical issues and more.
It does feel like a lot sometimes, specially now that a third kid is coming into our lives in December (glad it´s after harvest time!) but it is such a rewarding life that every task we do feels very gratifying and fulfilling.
It is common to see me on my phone responding emails and doing phone calls while at the park with my daughter but it is all about finding the balance to your personal and work life.
Thinking about the future, it would be a great thing for our kids to keep it in the family but only if it was truly their calling and they loved what they are doing.

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.

Little introduction: Miles Garrett Wines is a small family run winery producing our own grapes and olives.
We try to make wines that represent the land and the unique micro climate of Humboldt County and the Willow Creek AVA (American Viticultural Area).
We dry farm our CCOF certified organic grapes (no irrigation), cultivate cover crops in the winter and allow our farm animals into the vineyard at certain times to graze. Once the grapes are in the winery, we practice natural winemaking, which means minimal intervention. We let fermentation take place with naturally occurring yeasts, we never add sulfites or any other additives through the process.
We raise our wine in aged french oak barrels or stainless steel, and bottle unfiltered.
Our team is made up of family, friends, employees and volunteers.

More:
Miles bought the Peach Tree Lane Vineyard in 2016, right when I met him and I remember him saying it to me and thinking: “good for you!, sounds very exciting” but I did not know that two years later that same project he began back then would become such an important part of my life and my home.

Miles had been making and experimenting with wine since a young age at home and in a small scale. Getting local grapes from neighbors and self teaching himself – like basically everything else he has done in his life. Once the opportunity came to acquire the old Winnetts Vineyard, he got most of the first knowledges of how to run the winery equipment and natural winemaking techniques from Chad Hardesty who had been making his own wine and helping the Winnetts for years. Miles had been also farming his whole life so the grape growing part came even more natural to him.

The property came with 86 olive trees that we harvest once a year and make it into olive oil for personal use, friends and wine club members.

Miles´ philosophy has always been to grow and keep everything the most natural way where now it is called “regenerative farming” – No till/disc, animal grazing, cover cropping, minimal soil disturbance, diverse undergrowth and organic practices. This feels the right way of treating our land and home for us.
All this also took us to the decision of making natural wine where we do not add any additives to our wines, pure fermented grape juice and we only use organic grapes that come mostly from our own property.

Farming takes a lot of time and effort but we feel that it is such an important part of our who we are and how we live that making wines from our own vines makes it all into a perfect circle. It is very common these days to buy grapes and make wine but like I just said, for us is more of a way of living and doing what we love plus we feel very lucky to be able to work our own land.

Our wines are small batched, organic, dry farmed and natural. Miles has been in charge and part of every step in the whole process; from the grape growing to the wine making, bottling, labeling and packaging.

Any advice for managing a team?

Intro: Our team is made up of family, friends, employees and volunteers.

Answer: When talking about family members, friends and volunteers who aren´t actually getting paid in money, it is tricky to find ways to keep them motivated and keep up with the good work. In those cases, you have to understand each individual and try to find what they are looking for from the experience, because that is what it is mostly for them.

We try to bring a good and positive vibe into the scene and bring people in with good attitudes and who really want to learn and be part of a community. Harvest is a good example of this and lifetime friendships are form among volunteers and workers.

Having a great positive manager is also important in all this since volunteers need someone strong to follow to in their every day tasks; including their personal chores (cooking, cleaning etc.).

Friends usually come and help for one or two days and a pizza party using our wood fired oven after the work day is always a good incentive for them (plus some wine or olive oil).

Finding experienced local workers is been hard for us due to the lack of people willing to do farm jobs and because how remote we are (6 hours north of San Francisco) but our goal is to create a regular team that comes back every year.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

Most of our wines are distributed through distributors among 6 states at the moment and growing. Some wine makers decide to do the distributions themselves in their own state but we do not have the time for that so we decided to only focus on the local sales where we build close relationships plus are places we go usually to shop ourselves. There is a growing demand of natural wine in our area and people are getting to know more about it thank to people like us.

Going back to the distributors, we started distributing only in CA first with Tess Bryant Selections and once she did the move to WA we started working with Amy Atwood Selections, both strong women with a very smart view of the wine business. Once sales started slowing down and also needing to find new buyers for the rest of our wine, we started looking at other states and slowly been creating relationships with new distributors. It is very important to find the right fit, someone responsive and who understands and can represent your wines correctly. Recommendations and other wine makers experiences also help to pick the right one for you.

Something important to learn in the distribution world is that you are not the only child and you have to see your distributor as a mother of many who is trying to take care of all. Patience, constancy and smart strategies are important too.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.milesgarrettwines.com
• Instagram: @milesgarrettwines
• Facebook: Miles Garrett Wines
• Yelp: Miles Garrett Wines
• Hipcamp: Miles Garrett Vineyard

Image Credits
Image Credits: Evynn LeValley Photography