#27 Good Trading Partners Make Good Friends

How things work in the Finger Lakes Wine industry

Since our first vintage in 2011, we have worked with many different winemakers. Ours is not a typical arrangement in the wine world. Actually, we think it is a better arrangement than the typical arrangement.

It started when we went looking for our first winemaker. We had focused on our vineyard, and did not have the funds to build our own production facility.

We contracted with an existing winery which happened to have extra tank space for our wines (see Substack #26.)

In Year Two (2012), we outgrew that first winery and contracted with a second winery and winemaker.

Still growing, in Year Three we contracted with a third winery and winemaker.

In Year Five (2015) we started working with the fourth winemaker in a larger facility.

In Year Six we worked with the fifth. In Year Eight (2018), the sixth.

And for the last five years, we settled down and have worked with the same three winemakers and their facilities.

Although we are not working with all the different winemakers today, we remain friends and colleagues. I respect all of them and hope the feeling is mutual.

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What makes this all work is that we have a common interest. All of us are trying to make a living in a way that would not work if each of us were trying to do all of it all by ourselves. We each focus on the part that engages us. That is the part each of us does well.

I notice this, because we are operating in the tiny microcosm of the Finger Lakes wine industry. It is a small group where word travels fast.

In human history, trading between people with different skills (as we are doing here) led to social and cultural progress. More complex societies, longer lifespans, everything—both good and evil—that has made human existence what it is today.

Sometimes I step back and marvel at this. It is humbling.

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Steve Jobs, the founder of the tech company Apple, one of the wealthiest people in the world, died prematurely of cancer in 2011. He was a billionaire. Near the end of his life, he put it this way.