Untamed Wine Estates

What’s it going to look like? **** We never realized how much design is involved in the production of wine: bottles, labels, corks, winery, tasting room, crush pad, interior, exterior, websites. We also never realized the cost involved in design (we were recently quoted $10,000 for just a label design). To avoid large designer fees we are being forced to get creative. Our main focus now is developing architectural plans of the winery and tasting room. But where do we start? O ne building or two buildings? Sloped roof? How tall? What materials? We want a building that is elegant but efficient, sophisticated but relaxed, and rustic with a modern twist. Large enough to accommodate all visitors and hold up to 200 barrels, but small enough to stay within budget. Sounds simple, right? But this is a lot easier said than done! Since we obviously don’t have a building design to show you yet, enjoy this picture of our dog, Howie, trying to drive a forklift. What winery design would...

Starting a winery is not our first business adventure together. We opened a laboratory, The Lab Pros, for the central coast wine industry in the summer of 2017. After a year of working in the Monterey area, we realized there were not any nearby labs for winemakers to analyze their samples. Instead, wineries were mailing samples to Napa and waiting on average 3 days for the results. Looking to better our wine community, Mckenzie resigned from her job to solely focus on starting a local laboratory. To raise money for this adventure, we entered into a “Shark Tank” competition for the Monterey area. In this 3-month process, we competed against 96 other participants all with diverse business ideas. We had just flown back from South Africa the night before our final presentations and despite being a little tired, we ended up winning the competition. The Lab Pros quickly gained over 50 clients in the first year and have blossomed into a successful business.    We a...

A big thank you to all our friends, family, and new supporters that are following our journey! We began dreaming of our own winery a long time ago, but only seriously considered it within the last 4 months. Current update: we have a name, corporation, general location, dozens of cost analysis spreadsheets, and a whole bunch of ideas. Oh, and a half-paid-for grape press. We have made an offer on a property, and in the process of counter offering, obtaining a survey, and going through due diligence- all during our current harvest in California. The image attached to this post is a sneak peak of the property: 38 acres off of Highway 290 in Fredericksburg, TX. We wanted to be close enough to the main highway to receive the traffic, but far enough away to provide a sense of exclusiveness to our guests. Deciding on this property was not easy- we looked at dozens of properties. A big shout out to Cloe Sill, our realtor, on having the patience to put up with us! We are finding...

After we decided to commit to creating a winery (about 4 months ago), we had 2 questions to answer: 1) What are we going to call it? 2) Where is it going to be located? (we’ll answer this in a different post). At first we thought we would call it Sanvido (our last name), but this quickly became an issue because not most people can spell it correctly. We wanted an easy name to spell, say, and remember. Next we thought DMS (our initials), but maybe that was a little too simple. Plus, we didn’t want our wine confused with Instagram “DMs” or Dimethyl sulfide- for those of us chemistry nerds. Since that ruled out having our name in the wine label, we chose to go with a common name. We wanted something that reflected our entrepreneurial goals- breaking free from the 9-5 job positions and branching out on our own: unbounded... unreined... UNTAMED ... And the Untamed Wine Estates name was born, incorporated, and trademarked.

Having worked in many places all over the world, we chose a location which neither one of us thought we would ever end up, especially while working in the wine industry. We have been living and working in Carmel, California for the last 2 years. Although it is a beautiful place, living expenses were getting the better of us. After deciding on building a winery and visualizing all the capital involved in building costs, equipment, and production- we knew it was time to move. California is blessed with so many wonderful wineries, and to stand out from the crowd would take a lot of ingenuity and money, so we began looking at different options.. After months of research, we came across a place where we heard mixed reviews coming from California. Putting gossip aside, we flew out to see for ourselves. We immediately felt welcomed as wine professionals, and fell in love with the area and people. The town is rumored to be second largest wine tourist destination outside of Na...

Hello, and welcome to our journey in creating a winery. We all drink wine, but have you ever wondered what it takes to build a winery, tasting room, and make the actual wine? We’re Dane and Mckenzie Sanvido, a recently married couple who are quickly finding out what exactly it takes to build and produce quality wines. We have a combined experience of about 20 harvests (an equivalent of 20 wine years) of making wine. We have worked everywhere from small wineries to very large wineries all over the world and in all positions of the winery. As much as we have enjoyed our travels, we have decided to take the next step (a large and scary step) and enter the entrepreneurial world of developing a winery of our own. We are choosing to share our process as it happens. You will see our ups and downs in creating a successful business, and in the end, we hope to encourage you to follow your dreams! Join us in living and drinking UNTAMED ..