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Fact Sheet

Name & Title: Carol Shelton, winemaker/co-owner

Winery name & location: Carol Shelton Wines, Pine Creek Business Park, Santa Rosa CA—“The Sonoma County Wine Ghetto.” After custom crushing for seven years, it is great to finally have a home base where we can do small lot/bin ferments and take care of all of our barrels, even if it is in a roll-up door warehouse in a business park. We have a small tasting room here now too, which sure helps the bottom line! There is also a bit of synergy in our location, since there are five wineries is our “park” and several others just blocks away.

Annual case production: About 5,000 cases, primarily vineyard-designated
Zinfandels

Planted acres: None, but I wish…

Career background: I cannot believe I have been working in the wine industry for 33 years now! I got my BS in Fermentation Science from UCD in 1978 and held crush jobs at Robert Mondavi in Oakville, Saltram’s in the Barossa, and UV-Madera. Then I worked for a year under Andre Tschelistcheff at Buena Vista, followed by 19 years with Klein Family Vintners, the last 10 of which I was the winemaker for the Windsor Vineyards brand—48 SKUs, 200,000 cases. I left there to start my own brand in 2000, doing the first seven years as custom crush and now enjoying a small place of my own.

What has been your biggest professional challenge? Time Management. Wearing all the hats has been a huge challenge—my husband and I do just about everything: vineyard sampling, cellar work, budgeting and accounting, marketing, sales, compliance, fixing the computers, cleaning the toilets...you get the picture. There just are not enough hours in the day to do it all and do it well, but we do our best!

Varietals that your winery is known for: Five different vineyard designated Zinfandels, dry Rosé of Carignane and two Late Harvests—Trousseau Gris and Zin—tiny batches of Rockpile Petite Sirah and Cabernet, a new White Rhone blend from Paso Robles.

Why I read Wine Business Monthly:

I look to Wine Business Monthly for the updates on equipment and processing that I am too busy to ferret out on my own. When we moved into our warehouse winery I had to move very quickly to be ready for crush, so I quickly researched our needs through the online archives of winebusiness.com’s crush equipment product reviews. Also, I have recently branched out from Zinfandel to make a white Rhone blend and some Rockpile Cabernet. I was able to read up on the latest techniques—since I have not made these varietals in a while—to ensure that these inaugural releases were stellar.

I get a lot out of the marketing trends and business articles as well, and you even have compliance updates now and then!
I especially benefitted from the “Direct to Consumer Case Study” by ML Hilton in the December 2008 issue—very timely and useful ideas.