We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chelsea Chase. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chelsea below.

Chelsea, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

As the daughter of a Castle winery I’m often referred as a princess, what people may not know is that the princess life is a lot of work and not so much pretty dresses. I have done everything from cleaning toilets to restocking wine and chocolates just maybe not in that order :) I’ve worked in wine for eight years which is longer than some higher education and what I take from it is my server street smarts, what issues will stress my dad out so I handle them. How to organize a dungeon that makes sense for inventory and what’s the best way to cut a pizza. My family works so hard to make sure everyone who walks in has a good time and leaves with more than just some wine in a bottle but memories and laughs. We work together to plan an execute wine club parties and honestly just every single weekend. Our biggest strength is my mom, she’s the glue that keeps us sane and kind. Her big heart along with my dads visionary skills are what make the castle the best stop (in my opinion:). However, we’re human, we overact to stressful situations every so often, when a bus of 100 comes in unannounced or a pizza burns we tend to helicopter those emotions until the day is over. I’ve found that no matter how much you try to plan for the chaos, it always finds a way.

As someone who doesn’t plan on having children anytime soon I still know I wouldn’t want mine in the business either way, not because it isn’t great, it truly is, but being on call 24/7 takes a toll on the family dynamic. I forget what it’s like before working for my parents and often miss that feeling of missing them. Seeing them on a weekly basis is a blessing but our conversations seem to circle around the Castle and how we can improve it or how business has changed, how do we adapt.

Overall, I’ll always be grateful for the life my parents have created and the business that does keep us connected on a daily basis. My weird work schedule and forgiving parents allows me to travel, shop at less busy times and figure out what’s important in life. While we may talk about business more than others we get some tax ride offs that make it worth it and life experiences that come with the wine world. While many aim to make their mark in the Texas hill country my family has! I’m a princess to the most important people, my mom and dad.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Chelsea Chase, I have been serving wine since I was 18, which is legal in Texas. I started because my dad really wanted to open up a winery and when my mom finished her viticulture studies they opened a winery! The 290 Wine Castle has been my place of business for almost five years now, we do regular tastings, dungeon tastings and I take over for a Haunted Dungeon experience! I have learned about wine from soms, the internet and the people who walk into the winery. Wine is always changing and adapting to the tastes of the customers so I am in charge of menu changes and I get to taste test new varietals ever so often. I’m most proud of my event planning skills that have developed from working at a winery. From the club parties to putting on the Haunted Dungeon there’s a lot of actual blood, sweat and tears that goes into all the events. The Castle wants to bring unique wines from around the world to the people of Texas and our kind un-snooty approach to wine is refreshing!

Have you ever had to pivot?

I can imagine everyone is going to mention covid…. covid sucks…. truly!

TABC would come out to the hill country on a weekly basis to try and shut wineries down, we were closed for a period but bills still came in. We had to learn new ways of staying open everyday, it was truly hard and bonding experiences for all the winery owners. We learned to do tastings more separated as in virtual or from six feet away. We had to up our food sales so they wouldn’t call us a bar and close our doors. We didn’t buy any grapes for some time, that caused ripples in coming back with no inventory aging in the barn. Our business is finally back to what it was but now there’s 200 wineries to compete for customer, our new pivot is to make more Instagram-able experiences which is always fun explaining to my parents.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

Loyalty to the winery equals quality. We will never be a fully estate winery because we like choice and having choice means providing the best vs what you have. We have created a reputation of unique wines that you can’t find anywhere else other than the Castle and that’s what were good at. We keep in touch through constant contact portals like emailing and social media but in person is our best bet! We go all out for our wine club parties and the human aspect of the business that we’re not corporate we’re family!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.290winecastle.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/290winecastle/
• Facebook: 290 Wine Castle