Napa Valley's 'Super Seconds'

"Posted By : Chris Corley

There are lots of ways for a winery to measure its success. High ratings and positive reviews provide feedback on wine quality. Sales of individual wines and customer comments also create a dialogue between the producer and the consumer. Gross revenue, profit margins, case sales by geographical region and percentage of sales direct from winery are some of the many metrics that we track to measure how we are doing.

Some other important measures that we keep track of may be somewhat unique to a winery of our small size. Employee retention, for instance, is very important to us. We have a few staff members that have been with Monticello for over 30 years, several for over 20 years, and a large number of staff that has been with us longer than 10 years. Our newest member on the production staff has been with us for 7 vintages. These are important numbers to us. Employee retention extends our family at the winery. Along that line, family involvement is another measure. We currently have five family members working full time at the winery, covering the four main areas of grapegrowing, winemaking, sales and administration.  This is also very important to us as a family-owned estate winery.

All that said, we sometimes can condense our goals into somewhat more simple terms. We strive to make great wine and sell it at a fair price.

Recently, we were happy to see our efforts recognized in Steve Heimoff's recent blogpost naming Monticello as one of Napa Valleys 'Super Seconds', a reference to our winery being an elite producer of great wines selling for a fair price. Please follow the link to read Steve's full post at his blog ...

http://www.steveheimoff.com/index.php/2012/12/17/elite-value-in-napa-valley-call-em-super-seconds/comment-page-1/#comment-274151

Cheers, Chris"