19: Grgich Hills Estate Winery President on growing a resilient business

Violet Grgich, President and CEO of Grgich Hills Estate Winery, joins the podcast to discuss lessons she learned from her father, the literal “King of Chardonnay,” and how she’s applied those to her leadership journey. Violet also takes Vistage CEO Sam Reese through the strategies she’s built to prepare and succeed through natural disasters and an ever-changing customer landscape.

Key takeaways and action items

• Lead with simplicity and heart: Violet’s leadership is anchored in her father’s mantra: “Do your best. Learn something new. Make a friend.”
  • Reflect: What mantra guides your decision-making?
• Preserve core values through change: Violet emphasizes protecting her company’s core values amid external challenges.
  • Reflect: Do your decisions reflect your values, even during crises?
• Foster a collaborative, multi-skilled team: By hiring people — not just for positions — and encouraging cross-functional skills, Violet builds adaptability and loyalty.
  • Reflect: How are you cross-training your workforce?
• Prepare proactively for uncertainty: Regenerative organic farming shielded Grgich Hills’ vineyards from wildfire smoke damage.
  • Reflect: Assess proactive strategies that can strengthen your business against external forces.
• Delegate to focus on growth: Violet’s challenge of letting go of tasks is an ongoing struggle.
  • Reflect: What’s one thing you did today that could have been delegated to your team?
• Prioritize authentic customer connections: Despite tech advances, Violet affirms the irreplaceable value of in-person experiences.
  • Reflect: Are there areas where you can balance both digital and personal connections to build loyal customers?

Transcript

Violet Grgich: Well, I always keep coming back to every day, do your best. Learn something new. Make a friend.

Sam Reese: Make a friend. I love it. Violet Grgich: Make a friend. And make a friend is not just network with your peers. Treat your employees with respect. Make them your friends. Make their life easier. Sam Reese: Welcome, everyone, to another episode of A Life of Climb podcast. I’m your host, Sam Reese. With me today is Violet Grgich, president and CEO of Grgich Hills Estate Winery. Violet, thanks for joining us.

Violet Grgich: Thank you so much. It is great honor to be here with you.

Sam Reese: This is one episode where I definitely wish I was there in person because I love where you guys are. I’ve spent a lot of time out there myself. I’ve been to your winery. Could you just paint us a picture, if we walk through the grounds right now of Grgich wineries, give us a picture of what that would feel like and what that would look like.

Violet Grgich: Wow. Well, it’s really a beautiful place. When my father built the building, he wanted it to remind him of his native land, Croatia. So, it’s white stucco with the red tile roof, and it’s surrounded by our vineyard. When you walk up to the front entrance, you’re greeted by one of our fabulous hosts, hostesses. We have a very diverse group of people here, and they’re all incredibly down to earth. We will seat you either outside, surrounded by our wonderful gardens. It’s not a fancy designer garden, but it’s really very, very natural. We are certified regenerative, organic, and we like to keep things simple. So, the more natural we can make things, the happier we are. And we create an environment that really makes people very happy.

Sam Reese: That seems like a fun job to have. And you’ve been involved in the business how long now?

Violet Grgich: Oh, my gosh. I want to say since 1977, really officially the summer of ’78 when I started work on the bottling line. Long time.

The King of Chardonnay

Sam Reese: Long time, yeah. This is a family business in its true sense. And your dad is literally… you don’t just say Hall of Fame dad. He really is a Hall of Famer in the wine industry. And his nickname. I just loved it when I was reading about this, the King of Chardonnay, is so cool. So, tell us a little bit about your dad and his philosophy about you having to work every aspect of the job.

Violet Grgich: Oh, my gosh, so many amazing stories. So, very basically, he was born in a very small poor village in Croatia, which was part of Yugoslavia, a communist country at the time. He was the first member of his family to go beyond the eighth grade, but he actually started out stomping grapes and making wine. And so, that was wine was in his blood. He studied at college viticulture and analogy. And when he was there, one of his professors went away on sabbatical of all places to UC Berkeley, close by to Napa. And when that professor came back, my dad wanted to know what it was like in this country that the communists said horrible things about. And so, his professor told him that America was a land in which you could achieve your dreams. And on top of that, Napa Valley was paradise. So, that inspired my father to flee communism and to come to Napa Valley in 1958.

He actually became famous when he made one of the two most famous wines in the world. It was a Chateau Montelena Chardonnay, 1973 vintage, and it was entered into a competition without his knowledge in France with the very best French white burgundies and red Bordeaux. And it came out the number one wine in the entire tasting. It’s called the Judgment of Paris. And it was held in 1976. And that literally is the incident that not only put Napa Valley on the map, but also really introduced wine to a lot of Americans who were not familiar with it.

Sam Reese: Wow.

Violet Grgich: Founded the winery in 1977, found a wonderful partner by the name of Austin Hills from the Hills Brothers Coffee family. And so, our very first Chardonnay in 1977 actually earned another number one spot out of 221 of the best Chardonnays in the world. And that’s when people started calling him the King of Chardonnay.

Sam Reese: Incredible. So, the first time he came to the country was what year then?

Violet Grgich: 1958.

Sam Reese: 1958. That is an amazing story. And literally, I didn’t know the roots of the whole wine country connected to him. Incredible story. Now, what about him as an expert in the process and an expert wine maker? What were the things he taught you just when it came to the business side that still stick with you today?

Mantra for success in business and life

Violet Grgich: Well, there’s so many different things. I think number one is something that he was told by his father when he left home at the age of eight to go to school. And his father told him to, “Every day, do your best, learn something new and make a friend.” And I’ve heard that my whole life. That is not only our personal philosophy, but our business philosophy.

So, my dad would always tell me to make sure I kept it simple. Why make something complicated when you can keep it simple? And what’s very important is that I started on the bottling line. I mailed out newsletters, cleaned tanks and barrels. And you have to be willing to learn and do everything because otherwise you won’t know the business. And that’s important because no matter what task you are given to do, and no matter how simple or how lowly, if you can figure out a way of doing it better or understanding the value and the meaning it has, that can turn you into somebody who might be a janitor into literally the CEO of a company. And you will have the ability to adapt, which is something that’s absolutely necessary in life and in business.

Sam Reese: Did you know you wanted to be in the wine business? And tell us a little bit about that journey.

Violet Grgich: Well, it’s actually quite a journey. When I was very young, I think I was three or four years old when my dad started bringing me to the wineries that he worked at. He worked at Robert Mondavi and in fact, I think everybody knows that arch with the tower on it.

Sam Reese: Of course.

Violet Grgich: My dad’s office was in the very top of the tower. So, I felt like Rapunzel sort of going up those wooden steps. And at Chateau Montelena, there’s a beautiful lake with islands, and bridges and a castle, of course. And so, even though I spent pretty much every weekend running around the wineries, once my dad started insisting that I become a winemaker, it was definitely not my idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I had a lot of different interests, a lot of passions, a lot of things I was good at, and he was so renowned, and I just couldn’t imagine ever reaching that level. And so, the more he insisted I become a winemaker, the more I was stubborn and went in the opposite direction.

And so, finally after going to graduate school and then coming back, I started realizing that… well, I actually heard from a customer one time at a wine tasting, “Oh, do you know, I saw your dad last weekend and he could not stop talking about how proud he is of you. He’s like, ‘My daughter’s getting her master’s in music.’” And I’m like, “He never said anything nice to me about that.” He was always [asking], “When are you coming home?” So, it turns out that like any Croatian father, he was trying to make sure I didn’t get a big head.

When I was young, I thought business was horrible and boring. It was just about making money. And then I realized how exciting it was because there’s so many different things you could be doing, and you could actually be creating and making wonderful things. For us, wine is an art. Yes, it’s science, but it’s more of an art. And my dad would always say that he made wine with his heart and his wines were like his children. And to be able to make something that brings people together and makes them happy is just such a joy.

Over the years, I found I could actually do more than I thought I could and really fell in love, not just with the business of wine, but that ability to work with people and make things better. And our goal has always been sort of larger than just making wine, but it’s that making people happy. And we find that that aspect of bringing people together is so important.

Sam Reese: Yeah, I love that way you connected that to your mission, to bring people together. That seems like something that would be very inspiring to be working there. I imagine, do you have employees that have been there for a long time.

Violet Grgich: I do.

Sam Reese: Just by listening to you, it sounds like you build that kind of culture.

Hiring people, not positions

Violet Grgich: Well, it’s interesting. I never really used to think about that. But I was thinking with my dad, he always wanted to make sure that he hired the best people, people that can do everything. So, I’m always talking about hiring people, not positions, because everybody here wears many different hats. And if you are able to wear many hats, it’s much more fun than if you’re always relying on just doing your own job and looking at your particular bit of the puzzle. But being part of a team and creating a culture of teamwork where people can help each other and pitch in has always been very important for us.

Sam Reese: That was something that your dad believed in. When did you get that lesson? Did you get that before you started running the place? Or did you see that as a young person?

Guided by purpose

Violet Grgich: One of the things that I recall when I was working in the cellar was that my dad hired Enologists. He hired people who had degrees in winemaking. A lot of wineries would pride themselves on, “I’m the winemaker and it’s all about me.” Whereas my father actually had a team of winemakers. And he wanted people to know, not just having one winemaker and then the cellar crew that didn’t really know what they were doing. He found that no matter what your position was, if you knew why you were doing what you were doing, that made you much better at that task, even if it was topping barrels, which is to make sure they’re full. If you understand that you’re topping barrels so that there’s no air between the bung and the wine itself, and you know that will prevent microbial development, then you’ll keep that wine protected. And that why will help you do better no matter what that small task is.

Sam Reese: One of the things that I’m so interested to ask you this question is that right now you think about all the things leaders are grappling with and just the power of external forces that make things unpredictable. And I think in all businesses you could be doing everything right and then things can go wrong that you have to manage. But in your business, this is something you’re always dealing with. I mean, you just have the external challenges. Whether it’s weather for harvest. You have the fires in Sonoma fairly recently.

Violet Grgich: And Napa.

Sam Reese: And Napa, that’s right. Are there strategies you’ve developed over the years about how you sort of, or are able to, persevere through these challenges that are outside of your control?

Preparing for external challenges

Violet Grgich: What’s most important is to review your core values. You can adapt anything else, but once you start adapting your values, you’re pretty much lost. You’ve lost your groundwork. External factors such as the ones you mentioned, those are oftentimes a lot easier to deal with than more uncertain ones such as changing demographics. So, you mentioned fires. We had a lot of issues, twice, fires in 2017 and 2020. A lot of wineries didn’t make wine or had to toss some of their wine because of smoke taint. We made our wines in 2017 and 2020, and with no smoke taint because our vineyards are a certified regenerative organic. We started farming organically in 2000, biodynamically in 2003 and started regenerative organic in 2018 or 2019, which we believe is the highest form of farming. But it actually creates immunity and protection for the vines. Our vines withstood the smoke. They have this waxy cuticle on the outside of the grape smoke could not penetrate. So, we believe how we farm is a huge, huge part of being able to protect ourselves against those kind of forces.

Sam Reese: I love the lesson about all the preparation ahead of time. That just by listening to you is just a really good framework that when something like that comes, you got to get ahead of it. You guys had planned all these things. Obviously the wine industry is a huge industry throughout the world in the United States, and a lot has to do with the success of people like your father and your winery. But the flip side is how competitive it is. And I just wondered, how do you stand out in a market that is extremely crowded?

Differentiate through customer experience

Violet Grgich: Great question for all of us. I think these days you have to do so much more. I remember back in the old days, the greatest expenses in winemaking were your grapes and making wine. Sales and marketing, that was nothing. These days it’s completely flipped. There is so much new technology with how to reach people. You have to constantly be there. But I keep going back to my dad’s values of everyday, make a friend. I used to be horribly, horribly introverted and could not imagine having a conversation with a person in a social setting. And my father was very smart, and he sent me out to do these things whether I liked it or not. And I thought, “Okay, well, this is going to be terrifying, but all I have to do is pour my wine into a glass, wait for them to take a sip and then take their order.” And he was right. So, figuring out how to have people taste your wines, when people taste them, they’re blown away.

Sam Reese: Has this business become much more complicated on that sales and marketing side? You talked about new technology, new ways of touching people. Besides just getting people to your winery to taste, what are the ways that you connect with customers and drive demand in your business now?

Violet Grgich: Technology changes and being able to use technology for the benefit of consumers and for reaching out to them is great. I mean, we can text our consumers. We have our website that can reach out to them. Social media, too. Those are all ways. But when it comes down to it, I think it’s the in-person. It’s the events, when we actually especially pair wine with food, we do dinners or wine tastings. We bring people to our winery, and tell them our story and have them try our wines. That’s still the most basic part and that’s still the most important part, is to connect on a personal level. Whatever technology you have is just there to enable that connection to happen.

Sam Reese: How would you describe your leadership style? If I worked for you, what would I say about your leadership style?

Violet Grgich: I think I really believe in teamwork and bringing people together, and having people come with solutions rather than problems. And again, it comes down to friendship and having respect for everyone that you work with. My executive assistant is always, “Your door is open way too much. You need to close it to get things done.” But I do feel it’s important to be able to connect with everybody who is here no matter what position they’re in, because they’re all part of the winery and part of what makes this place tick. And my father, of all the things… I mean, there’s such a long list of things that he has accomplished and has done. But the number one thing that he said he was most proud of was providing employment for almost 50 people.

Sam Reese: Yeah, I love to hear that. It inspires me when I think about the work we do, as we say, we help high-integrity leaders make great decisions that benefit their companies, their families, and their communities. Because, as you know, that’s how this country and, actually, around the world runs those small and mid-sized businesses. Is there one big area on your mind when you think about leadership and where you’re really trying to improve or be more effective that you’ve targeted in your own leadership journey?

Learning how to delegate

Violet Grgich: I think it’s really being able to be truly focused, continuing to hire, and motivate and coach the best people possible. But I think it comes to time management. And it seems like such a basic, but I always feel I have way too much to do and not enough time to do it. And my father, years ago, told me that actually two different things. He said, every day you should only do three things. Focus on three things. Still learning how to do that. And not letting all of the stuff that’s irrelevant. I’m trying to let go of things that… yes, I used to do just about everything here, but I have to have somebody else do it so I can really focus on growing as a leader and ensuring that… I’m so used to my father having led the business for such a long time that, in some ways, I’m still in that mindset. That’s the direction I need to be focusing on, letting those other things go to others.

Sam Reese: I could see that what was probably interesting for you is that since you touched every part of the business, you actually know how to do almost different job in the winery. So, it seems like that would be really hard to not get distracted by that because if someone has an idea about the simplest or the most complex issue in the business, you probably have an opinion on that because you’ve done it.

Violet Grgich: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that can get in the way. So, yeah, delegate, delegate, delegate. I’m finally learning that, how important that is.

Sam Reese: I know you’ve been in your Vistage group for a while, you’ve been a member for several years. What’s been a part of that experience that you’ve enjoyed as you’ve got a chance to spend time and collaborate with other CEOs and different industries?

Violet Grgich: I have to say the biggest value for me is the group, the group of people, fellow CEOs, that you have confidentiality, you have people at your own level that you could and can confide in, and people that aren’t afraid to tell you what needs to be told. And when you find the right group of people, it’s a great joy. It gives you, in [a] sense, a cushion, a feeling that you’re not alone, that you know who you can call and talk to, who will support you and who will keep it to themselves as needed.

Sam Reese: When you think about the young leaders out there now and the experience and wisdom that you have, is there any advice you would give some of our listeners that are newer CEOs and just on the start of their leadership journey, any words of wisdom from the experiences you’ve had?

Violet Grgich: Well, I always keep coming back to every day do your best. Learn something new. Make a friend.

Sam Reese: Make a friend. I love it.

Violet Grgich: Make a friend. And make a friend is not just network with your peers, but treat your employees with respect. Make them your friends, make their life easier. Thinking about my dad, and even in his 90s, he was still learning new things. Learning as much as you can from higher people that are smarter than you are, learn from them. That’s the best thing you possibly could do. And don’t take yourself too seriously. You’re a person, you’re a human being. You have flaws. You can’t always be perfect. Don’t repeat the same mistakes. Learn from those.

Sam Reese: Terrific advice. Thank you for sharing that with me. It’s just so fun to listen to all the consistency you have and the way you think about the business. Good luck and best of luck in the future to Grgich Hills Estate Winery. Thanks for joining us.

Violet Grgich: And come visit Grgich Hills.

Sam Reese: Yeah. Thanks for joining us for this edition of A Life of Climb podcast. Friendly reminder to please subscribe or follow podcasts to get all the latest episodes. And please visit Vistage.com/podcast for more resources to support you on your leadership journey.

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