Meet Dot Wine
What is the story behind DOT?
Dot started as a bet between Shawn and I. When I came home from work, Shawn would often greet me with a mystery glass of wine. Depending on how tired I was, I would be rather critical, especially if it was a Pinot Noir wine. As Shawn grew tired of purchasing expensive wines and them never meeting my expectations, he finally told me to make a great wine. I took the challenge, and here we are!
Why DOT?
The name “Dot" actually came from his background in art. Just as the dot is the beginning effort in a masterpiece, so is the humble grape the beginning of a great wine.
What has been the hardest part of starting your business?
Taking the leap and starting the business. After working for decades for other people, it was absolutely terrifying to start my own business. It’s one thing to work for other people; it’s an entirely different level of responsibility to work for yourself.
Selling the wine. I’m a viticulturist by trade and have been making wine for decades. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s in my wheelhouse. A lot of people don’t realize that having your own wine brand means selling wine 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. I once worked with this amazing woman at a larger wine company, and she always said, “sales is a full contact sport.” At first I thought she was a little nutty, but now that we’re in it, she’s completely right!
We just passed the one year mark of Covid. What has the past 12 months taught you ?
Never give up on yourself and your dreams. I’m a farmer, married to a gardener, and hard work isn’t foreign to us; we ended up working as hard as we could and did our best to read the water and stay in front of the wave as much as possible.
Another lesson is to be authentic to your story. It was so important to Shawn to highlight our company as being founded by a biracial woman, and we were pleasantly surprised that our story is being welcomed as refreshing in the wine consumer community.
You mentioned that DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) is a big part of DOT’s mission. What does DEI mean to you and how are you accomplishing that goal?
DEI is very important to us because it’s who we are as an interracial family. We are a virtual brand, and our website is a big part of our marketing strategy. When we were developing the website, we wanted to make sure that all the imagery and language were authentic to our story. I thought we were doing an OK job but one day noticed a page had a pair of white, men’s hands holding a cluster of grapes. It really bugged me. It’s not that white men don’t touch the grapes associated with our wine programs, but the winemaker’s hands, my hands, happen to be brown and female. Most of the hands touching our grapes in the vineyard are those of our vineyard field workers, and those are brown too. We decided to diversify the product representation on our website and had a photo shoot. Our Marketing Director Tyishia Gage has gorgeous hands and killer nails, so we decided to use hers as our official Dot Wine model. After this happened, a couple friends in the wine marketing world called to say they were using our imagery to spark their own DEI brainstorming sessions. That was awesome and made us feel like a Filipino David taking on a wine Goliath!
What did you do before DOT?
I have worked for larger wine companies for decades and am currently a farm manager for a global fund management company and look after their winegrape vineyard assets. It’s a thoroughly rewarding job and offers me an incredible view into institutional investing for agriculture. Definitely the yin to my small wine label’s yang. Shawn has had a successful landscape design and maintenance company for 30 years and continues to make beautiful gardens in SF City and wine country.
What is your favorite place to eat in Healdsburg?
It’s so hard to choose. We live in an amazing town with exceptional restaurants and feel guilty whenever we choose one over the other. That being said, the Valette Healdsburg team are like family to us and we love everything they do.
What's a good book you've read (or listened to) during the last year?
I joined the Steph Curry book club and it’s opened my eyes to a profound discussion on race and social inequity in our country. Highly recommend reading The Other Wes Moore. It was a gut wrenching read that really forced me to have an honest discussion with myself and my family on how we may be inadvertently supporting social inequity and how to change. We also drive a lot and listened to the Pete Buttigieg’s book The Shortest Way Home. He’s a brilliant mind and it was an inspiring listen.
What do you like best about CraftWork?
It is a beautiful and thoughtfully designed space where my soul is at peace; this allows me to get an insane amount of work done in a short amount of time. When I’m there, everything is organized and lovely. It allows my mind to take over. Thank you for making this special place; it’s a big reason why I was able to get behind Dot Wine and take the big leap in 2019. My second vaccination is this Friday, and I’m coming back after that!!!!!!!