Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron Jackson.
Hi Aaron, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I was born and raised in the little beach hamlet of Cayucos, just west of Paso Robles. At a young age, I got interested in wine for no apparent reason – my parents certainly drank wine, but they didn’t have the resources to drink expensive wine nor collect it by any means. However, I got a random job in a vineyard around 1999-2000 when I was just a teenager, and I loved being outside and quickly found myself fascinated with this burgeoning industry near my hometown. At this time, Paso Robles was still somewhat in its infancy as far as the modern-day wine industry here is concerned, I like to say we were in the midst of Paso Robles v2.0. The Chardonnay, Zinfandel, Cabernet, and Merlot vines that have been planted here a decade or so earlier are slowly being replaced by more exciting varietals, specifically Rhone varietals. While I was attending Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, I was also working part-time at Four Vines Winery, which was making some pretty exciting wines at that time. I became fascinated with Petite Sirah and saw that very few people were making it despite the fact that it was making these rich, powerful, age-worthy wines that I felt were incredible for the region. In 2002 I decided to go ahead and start making my own wines, focusing on my love of Petite Sirah, thus the Aaron project was born. I used $1000 of tip money that I earned during the summer between college working at an oyster bar in Cambria, and that was my only startup money. I bottled up my first vintage and hand-sold every bottle, slowly growing from my first 3 barrels into a few more each year. After I completed my wine degree at Cal Poly, I went ahead and worked full-time as an assistant winemaker in Paso Robles for a few years before I decided to go to graduate school at the University of Adelaide in South Australia to get my master’s degree in Oenology. I was still making about 500-700 cases a year of my own wines, and after I finished graduate school and moved back to the US, I continued to grow my brand (whilst trying to pay off student loans) amidst winemaking gigs at other wineries in the area. In 2012–2013 I had the pleasure of working at Saxum Vineyards on the westside of Paso Robles, which was a pretty amazing moment in my career. To be involved in making some of the very best wines from the best vineyards in the region definitely redefined my perspective. Shortly thereafter, I decided that bone soup didn’t taste too bad, and I went ahead and committed to my own winery full-time. In 2014, I leased a property and had a custom-built winery built, which, for a time, I shared with another winemaker friend of mine (Guillaume Fabre of Clos Solene) so we could afford to pay the lease. We were very early adopters of an industrial area called Tin City, which has now grown into something really special. Today, Tin City serves as a sort of industrial incubator of sorts for a lot of great small producers and up-and-coming winemakers. In 2012 I had started making Pinot Noir from vineyards on the coast near my hometown of Cayucos, which I produce under my Aequorea (ay-core-ee-ah) label, which means “of the sea” in Latin. This project was something that I had grown equally passionate about as Petite Sirah, and around this time, there was also a grassroots movement going on amongst some vineyard owners to get a new AVA recognized for this coastal growing region. Due to my high degree of knowledge of the region, its soils, climate nuances, etc. I was chosen to lead the charge for petitioning for the new AVA and making it happen. After an eight-year effort, we finally got the San Luis Obispo Coast, also known as the SLO Coast AVA, approved by the TTB, and now I’m proud to say that we have a great amount of incredible wines coming out of this exciting area. Today, we produce about 4,000 cases of wine spread across 4 labels – Aaron, Aequorea, Keola, and Nature Boy all produced in our winery here in Tin City. We’ve built a loyal following of some of the most amazing customers anyone could ask for, and them along with myself and my team of 4 are like one big family. After almost 23 years of producing my own wines, I’m grateful to still be love with what I’m doing and living in the place I grew up. Paso Robles has most certainly changed a lot, but it still retains the charm and tight-knit community feel that it always has, and it’s simply a fantastic place to be doing what I’m doing!
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I think if you talk to any entrepreneur out there you’d be hard-pressed to hear a story that was a smooth road! For me, my biggest struggles have often been the challenges of growing due to the fact that it’s a very capital-intensive business. I started with only $1000, I never took on any investors, I never had any family money, trust funds, or any way to generate additional capital needed for growth. So, I had to be creative, frugal, work extra hard, and be tenacious about making sure that I sold wine so I could afford to make the next vintage. The financial crisis in early 2000s was definitely the most difficult time. I’d only recently been able to get a bank to actually loan me money since I had nothing but student loan debt and not assets to collateralize. Then the bank decided that they were gonna call all of my loans. I was pretty sure that I was going to fold, but I had a great history of being an honest good businessperson, and I worked out a program with them that allowed me to continue to lend to me as long as I met certain parameters, which I did. The second biggest challenge was probably the uncertainty that came with the Covid-19 pandemic. It was actually a good time for us sales-wise, but we just weren’t sure how the market, the customer, and the entire industry were going to change. You’re forking out time and money to make wines each year that you plan to release in 2-3 years, but you’re really have no idea what the landscape is going to look like at that time, so you’re really flying blind. At the end of the day, I didn’t lay off anyone, didn’t cut any hours, we actually worked extra hard through it to all. We got creative, we played it safe in some areas, and we got more aggressive in others, and we came through it as a stronger, better company in the end.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
I’ve always been the kind of person that likes to buck the trend and ignore the status quo. I started off my making Petite Sirah, which in and of itself was left of center compared to what everyone else was making in the market. I didn’t wanna make Cabernet, even if that’s what most customers wanted to drink (we make it now, but it took us 14 years to start). And that attitude to forging your own path and not being afraid of being the black sheep has infused itself into our company culture. We like to say here that “boundaries are few on the road less traveled.” When I started Aequorea, I knew that I wanted to make Pinot Noir, but I didn’t just want to make Pinot Noir from famous vineyards in Santa Barbara County like so many of my cohort was doing. I wanted to make Pinot Noir from somewhere that no one was making Pinot Noir from, so I ended up looking at vineyards out in the coastal no-mans-land. Today I’m proud to say that what we do keeps things exciting for us here in the winery and also brings us something to the customer that they really don’t get to see anywhere else. I feel like we’ve been successful at writing a new story for Central Coast wines, we’ve built a great following and a have a fantastic reputation, and that’s something that I’m really really proud of. Recently, what we’ve seen in Paso Robles is that the wines here I’ve gotten incredibly expensive. The way I grew up, my parents liked to enjoy wine, but they could never afford to not put on the table so they could tuck expensive bottles into a cellar. So, while I know that we are making some of the very best wines in the region from the best vineyards, I’ve been extremely stubborn about keeping our prices 30-50% lower than everyone else. Because at the end of the day, I actually want everyday people to be able to enjoy some of the best wines in Paso Robles. I’m not an elitist. Sure, I may have the winemaking chops and get 96-point scores from the top critics on my wines, but I live in a 700sq ft one-bedroom house, and I’m perfectly happy there. It’s what makes me happy, and making great wines and having people drink them rather than tuck them away in their cellars forever because they are “too expensive to drink” is ridiculous.
Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I think if we had to define the word entrepreneurship, ‘risk-taking” seems appropriate. I’m taking risks every vintage because despite how much data you gather and how amazing your spreadsheets and forecasting are, you’re still leveraging up to buy grapes and make the wine each year that you’re not going to release for years down the road. There’s an incredibly inherent risk there. And secondly, winemaking is by definition an agricultural business, so every year is a gamble in and of itself with Mother Nature. You never really know what you’re going to get. Part of that makes it exciting and dynamic, but it also makes it risky and scary at the same time. But you learn to embrace it!
Pricing:
- Tasting Fee: $25
- Wine Prices: $40-56
Contact Info:
- Website: aaronwines.com
- Instagram: aaronwines
- Facebook: aaronpetitesirah
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/aaron-wines-paso-robles
