Cheers to Change: The Inspiring Story Behind One Hope Wine Pt. 1-5

Forrest Kelly: 00:00:00

Welcome.

Forrest Kelly: 00:00:01

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast with Forrest Kelly. It's not every day that we hear a story about a wine company being born out of a public storage unit, a U haul truck, and a whole lot of passion.

Get ready, we've got a great ride. Here we go.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:00:18

Hi, I'm Jake Kloberdanz CEO and founder of One Hope Wine, The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:00:25

The web address is onehope.com or is it onehopewine.com OneHopeWine.com and.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:00:30

You can also visit our flagship property at onehopewinery.com which is more focused on our Napa property.

Forrest Kelly: 00:00:37

Let's start with a little bit about your background and we'll get to all the accomplishments and there are a lot of them. You didn't get there without having some kind of background that prepared you for that. So tell us about Jake.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:00:48

My career starts right after I graduated Cal Berkeley. Really my entrepreneurial journey started since I was a young kid, but we can dig into that a little bit later.

But my first real corporate job was with the largest wine company in the world.

And I started out in selling wine down in Newport beach, which sounds really romantic, but I found myself in the back of grocery stores and Stater Brothers Ralph's, things like that. And I would get there early and do manual labor with the team so I could get the best display spots to put my wine.

And so that's my initial introduction into the wine industry is merchandising and calling on 15 grocery store accounts and selling wine to them, mostly cheap wine and large volume wines ranging from Bartles and James wine coolers to Carlo Rossi to a handful of really good wines as well.

Forrest Kelly: 00:01:37

Did you have a hand in founding that and starting it, buying it? How did you get there?

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:01:41

Yeah, so started the original company. Like I said.

April: 2006

And so I fly home to see her the next day and I say I've had this idea for six months and I've done nothing. And I'm going to get started tomorrow and I'm going to start building this company while you're going through your fight with cancer.

And I go back to Newport Beach, I incorporate the business. You know, 15 weeks later she's beat cancer and she's cancer free. And I got the very start of the business.

The first, you know, crappy designs of labels. And had filed all the paperwork via winery the abc and found a winemaker to make the the first few pallets.

And another year later, I'm driving the first three pallets down in a u haul truck and driving down to where I still live at the time in southern California, and load them up into a public storage unit. So that's the beginning of the overall business.

have a winery. It's not until: 2014

So flash forward from June: 2007

Seven years later, we've grown a bit, and we decided to take the leap to start a real estate and hospitality business that would give us the ability to buy this vineyard that had come onto the market.

And it was in this ridiculous location with the most famous architect in napa valley history, blueprints, and architectural plans to build a winery there. And I just thought, this is a generational opportunity. We have to figure out how to get it.

And even though we couldn't afford it at the time, had the idea to build kind of an old world co op, if you will, take that model and apply it to the new world of napa and buy and build out amazing vision with a community of entrepreneurs and families that wanted to support this vision and also be a part and owner of the property itself.

Forrest Kelly: 00:03:52

You didn't get any pushback from the valley, did you?

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:03:54

I didn't actually get that much, surprisingly.

I think after I shared, you know, how I got to where I have gotten to and that I needed partners to be able to build out this project and that I was going to build something that was about a small community, owning something together, versus a really wealthy tech billionaire or a big conglomerate or something that has been passed down for four or five generations, which most of us aren't lucky about. I think it resonated. I think they. They actually bought into the idea of this innovative way that I was going to build this community.

And at the same time, napa's highly regulated. It's very hard to get a lot done here for good reason, because everything's about protecting the agricultural preserve here.

You know, it is hard and it is slow. But then I did face some setback.

There were definitely a few people here and there, but for the most part, the napa valley and the Families here, including the Mondavi family, the Renteria family, the Staglin family, and a bunch of others, really helped me as an ally and as an advocate for us. And so I'm thankful to the Napa Valley that they responded that way.

Forrest Kelly: 00:05:05

You made some pretty good progress right off the bat for a year. Only taking a year to be, you know, loading up that u haul with wine.

Because as you can imagine, all the growers that are giving their grapes, you know, selling their grapes, everybody wants their grapes. So for somebody new to come along, regardless of what your mission is, they're saying, get in line, buddy.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:05:23

Exactly.

It took a while to on the supply chain side, and then it takes a while to build a brand that people trust and where they know what the values of the brand are. The people behind it have had an experience connected to it.

And so it's definitely an uphill build and push to build any type of brand, let alone in the wine space.

Forrest Kelly: 00:05:44

So you graduated from Berkeley with a degree in what in business? You're located in Napa. Metaphorically. You're on the top of the hill, right. Of all the Napa wineries, you guys are on top.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:05:53

We're definitely amongst the greatest wine brands and families that have ever graced this country. We really admire a lot of the brands around us. And yeah, we're in the Rutherford region. It's.

And we're amongst some of the most iconic brands and some great terroir. But we're also right at the middle of the 30 mile corridor that is the Napa valley.

Starting at the very south in Carneros and stretching to the very north in Calistoga. And Rutherford is this tiny little Ada that sits right in the middle of it. And a number of very famous brands started in Rutherford, including Camus.

And you know, we've got cake bread right across the street. The famous Katokalan vineyard is just to our south. We're at the top of the food chain as far as locations goes.

And we built out a really special and unique community and property there.

Forrest Kelly: 00:06:42

You've got 95 plus point ratings and over 100 metals. Can you highlight a few of them that you're really proud of?

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:06:49

Yeah, there's a lot I would like to highlight. Some of them are in barrel right now. I think we have a few wines that are as close to perfect wine as we've done in our history.

I just tasted through our 22s that are in early release, you know, and usually you'll tell people to hold onto them for 12, 24 months at least before they open them.

know, I've had vintages, our: 2014

You know, our Oakville Cabernet and our Russian River Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are crowd favorites at the winery. Our Vintner Red blend that's gotten a 96 point rating, as well as our Vintner Cab, that's got a 93 point ra.

And those are affordable, you know, 25 to $30 price point wines as well as far as white wines.

And one of our most special wines is our Fume Blanc that we also do off of our property with our Sauvignon Blanc grapes and pay homage to the neighbors to the south of us. The Robert Mondavi brand and winery and his family story. Those are some of my favorite.

I rattled off a bunch, but Russian River Pinot, Russian Richard, our Oakville Cabernets, the State Cabernets we do off the property, and that Fume Blanc, along with our Vintner Collection Cabernet and Red blend that are easy to get. And I recommend buying, you know, a six pack or a case of those to hold in the cellar at any time or in your cupboard if you don't have a cellar.

Forrest Kelly: 00:08:16

You know, when you're growing up on this, did you. Have you developed your palate? Because you said you've tasted some of these wines and you say, this is it, thumbs up.

Have you developed that taste or were you just born with it, where you can taste good from bad?

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:08:29

My palate's good. I'm advanced in wine. I have a really good nose for wine, better than my tasting palate.

And your nose is about, I think, arguably as important as your tongue and the tasting wine. Smelling wine informs your taste a lot.

There's different parts of the wine tasting experience from how well you taste sugar and fruit on the tip of your tongue, to tannin in your cheeks, to acidity in your throat and alcohol in your chest.

But what develops the most and as you get more advanced is being able to kind of feel the wine and the texture of the wine and the weight of the wine on the mid palate. I would say the mid palate is the part that's progressed the most since the early years for me.

And so, yeah, I think I'm a good person to tell you if a wine's Extraordinary. Really good. Good enough or not, I won't drink it.

And those are kind of my buckets, you know, And I think being able to identify if that's a wine that should go to market.

Forrest Kelly: 00:09:29

So you mentioned price there. Just out of curiosity, how much of that plays into the quote, unquote, taste of the wine?

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:09:36

A lot of people, when they pale for a wine, the perceived value, they have a good chance of them perceiving it to be really good wine, too. There's also the potential that it doesn't deliver for what how much it was, you know.

And so I think a 40 to $75 price point, affordable luxury wine, to luxury gets a little bit more room, and a really good one of those stands out. And people will say it's excellent. And they're really. What they're saying is it's excellent for the price.

So I think a lot of our brains go to relative value and how good is it? And then how good is it relative to the price?

At the same time, if you're in the wine industry, you know that a big portion of that is tied to it being a great wine and there being demand for it, but a big portion of it's tied to the supply and demand curve. How much of it is there to sell? And if it's really small production, you can afford to put it at a really high price and you don't have to sell it.

Turn it over really fast, and there's not a lot of it. So supply and demand has a lot to do with it. Packaging and brand equity, building that over time.

That's the magic that also has a lot to do with it and then taste and how it's presented.

You know, when you drink a wine out of a perfect glass in a beautiful tasting room surrounded by vines, it does tend to taste better, just like wine tends to taste better when you're with people you like.

Forrest Kelly: 00:10:57

One is singular in form, yet it can encompass infinite potential. Tell me a little bit about the thinking behind One Hope Winery.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:11:06

One Hope's both our service and our product. Bringing people together is our service. You know, we do it through wine tastings.

And I used to think about our product as being wine, but our product is really hope, and it comes in the form of a bottle of wine. And so you take these two words that are two of the most powerful words in the English language and put them together. It is all one word, the brand.

There's a little extra space between the E and 1 and the H and hope to make it easier on Your eyes. We are a very unique brand that's brought two strong words together and represent our service and our product.

And our purpose is to nourish the future. And it has been since day one. And one Hope works perfectly with our North Star.

And our purpose of nourishing the future and our vision is to build the most innovative, iconic and impactful wine brand of this generation. And when we realize that vision will have served our purpose.

When you go to our website and you kind of look at the about us and you notice like we're we're living our mission day to day, which is sharing wine and giving hope and that that ladders up and serves our purpose as well to nourish the future.

So I started off as Hope Wine and I would always describe it that it was going to be this one overarching brand of hope with lots of products and lots of causes underneath it. And over time it developed from one overarching brand of hope to one Hope.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:12:27

Yeah, sometimes when you're standing inside the winery, which we'll get into in just a second, but when everybody's gone home and you're there by yourself and you're standing in that huge building and you just got to look around and go, wow, this all started from the back room standing in a slop bucket at Stater Brothers.

Forrest Kelly: 00:12:43

of the back of my truck as a: 2007

And so you tracked a lot of fancy cars. My beat up truck, it's there to remind everybody that of where we started.

You know, to this day I still kind of have that mentality of needing to hunt to eat. So I saw that in my my grandma and my grandpa.

They were depression era people and my grandma was an entrepreneur and the first of our family and built a very small business, but built a business that helped my mom be able to go to college and be the first in her family to do that. My mom built a little bit bigger business and then I've been able to build something to fairly good scale and bigger than both of them.

And I think when I look at my grandma, that was probably both from being depression era and from being an entrepreneur. And I grew up with that sense because she and My mom were dialed that way and so it was around me and I still have it to this day.

So yeah, I take moments where I'm like, wow, we've come a long way, but I also am hungry still and we're far away from what I want to realize with our vision. So there's a lot of work to be done. But we're also on the trajectory to realize a vision that's.

You know, when you talk about trying to be the most innovative, iconic and impactful wine brand of this generation, that's a generational vision. And so you got to stay hungry the whole generation.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:14:17

Where does your mom go to college?

Forrest Kelly: 00:14:19

My mom went to University of Arizona and then she, she joined the US Corps and went and served in the US army in Germany where she met my dad, who was a sergeant on the weapons base that they were on. They were on a nuclear weapons base in Germany. They went from there and traveled the world for a few years.

Ended up having my older sister in New Zealand and decided to come back to the States and they both went back to college. My dad for his undergraduate degree and my mom for her master's at Chico State and then moved to the Bay Area when I was 2.

So I was really fortunate to grow up in the Bay Area, kind of in the heart of the Silicon Valley during the early 80s. I was born 83 and we moved here in 85. And yeah, it was a really special time of innovation and entrepreneurship.

And my mom built business in the same area that my grandma did, which is marketing research.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:15:12

So that's where you went to Berkeley even though your parents tried to get you to go to their school?

Forrest Kelly: 00:15:20

Well, I was born in Chico, so I've always had a special bond with it. But yeah, growing up my dad worked at Stanford as a construction manager and I got to watch that campus be built and I was a big Stanford fan.

And then I got the opportunity to go to Berkeley. I played a little bit of football there and also played on the championship rugby team. It's an amazing program there, played sports there.

I got to be a part of the fraternity system and was part of the student government too.

So I had a well rounded college experience and was very social and it got me prepared, I think for being a leader in general and building organizations.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:15:59

Oh, I bet you the alumni loves having you on the board or being an alumni because when you come to the party, you're bringing the good stuff.

Forrest Kelly: 00:16:06

It is always good to have a wine guy on the team, you know, so it is easy. It's my easiest thing to contribute is that and ideas. I love coming up with, you know, different brands and ways to share things.

So I try to contribute not only my alma mater, but also on a couple other boards that I'm on. Yeah, we donate 10% of every purchase on OneHopeWine.com to the customer's cause of choice.

So the customer can go there, they can pick their charity on the top nav bar from a database of a ton of them or if it's not in there already, you can put in your own charity. As long as they have a 501C3 and we have people submit all the time and then they go and purchase.

And if you become a wine club member, you can give back year round by just getting your favorite wines delivered. We also integrate it into our hosting experience.

We have the ability to order a tasting kit and raise money for your cause of choice so the host can choose the cause if they're going to host a wine tasting event. And so those are the two main ways that we donate back.

We also power wine tasting events all over the country that are raising money and awareness for causes big and small.

So everything from having our wine at galas to small at home wine tastings and everything in between, and then we do have a great corporate gifting program is where the company gets to choose their cause of choice and gets to donate 10% to their cause of choice as well.

So across all the different channels, we give the person who's buying the ability to feel good about their purchase and impact somebody in a really positive way. On the other side, how did you.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:17:42

Come up with that plan of not only listing charities but for the buyer to designate a charity?

Because it seems like it would be less complicated if you just said 10% and it's going to make a wish foundation or just one specific thing, but you've opened it up. How did you figure that out?

Forrest Kelly: 00:17:58

Well, as our brand started to become distributed more and more winery direct versus through the retail shelves where we obviously couldn't track it, we were able to do this and we built our own proprietary software into our e commerce system to track this and automate these donations over time. And on the wholesale side, because it is impossible to connect directly with the end consumer, we do donate meals for every case we sell.

And so it's simplified there. We have generated over three and a half million meals to date through the sales of our wines.

And for people who are buying from us direct, if they don't have a cause to pick out, they can default to the one hope foundation. And our one hope foundation focuses on funding larger gifts like funding schools and education. Clean water for people around the world.

We've funded clean drinking water for nearly 100,000 people now all the way to greater access to food and health. All of those causes are kind of our pillars under breaking the cycle of poverty.

And we've especially been focusing on children's education as of recently.

In this coming year, our goal is to underwrite the distribution of over $10 million of donated school suppl to children and students in underserved areas of the U.S. wow.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:19:18

A lot of this stuff, I'm sure, happens organically, But I'm sure you get people knocking on your door every day.

Forrest Kelly: 00:19:24

Definitely a lot of incoming demand from the recipients. So we go generate demand from the customers and from people selling wine. We really don't ask much from the nonprofit.

So we tend to be popular with nonprofits because a lot of times they're just getting a check without even knowing how it came. It's coming from one of our hosts or one of our customers who chose their nonprofit. They write us and they say, who are you guys?

And then they want to work with us, you know?

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:19:53

Yeah, fascinating, because I work with a lot of different charity organizations, too, and it's just kind of re energizes, you know, when the grind of business kind of tamps you down, Working with charities and different organizations, they tend to lift you up.

Forrest Kelly: 00:20:06

Yeah, definitely.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:20:07

So going to OneHopeWine.com and then scrolling down to about the middle of the page says, cheers to 11 million donated. That's you sitting on the bench there, right?

Forrest Kelly: 00:20:18

Yes.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:20:18

Yeah, right. What is a typical month like for you? Are you going all over the world? Are you staying on site with all of these activities going on?

Because, well, it's a toot your horn a little bit. You're on top of the Napa mountain, and so you've got to be busy. So what are you doing? How are you staying alive?

Forrest Kelly: 00:20:36

My work from our flagship property in Napa, and there's just always people coming through, and I do a lot of business development here. It helps because you're kind of right at the heart of the brand and in the middle of everything. We have a pretty distributed workforce.

We have our hospitality team here, and then we have a team around the country, and we have a lot of people who put on tasting experiences all over the country. Thousands of people that are brand ambassadors of ours.

I do a mix of everything, you know, whether it's selling, raising capital, when it's time to expand, coming up with new innovative ideas to grow the business, and then just pure execution of current model. There's a lot of substance and a good baseline, and then there's always new, exciting things as well.

And I think it's really important to keep a balance of those things even as you grow bigger and bigger.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:21:25

Do you sell all over the world?

Forrest Kelly: 00:21:26

We don't sell all over the world, but we do sell to Korea and to Japan.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:21:31

The United States is keeping you busy.

Forrest Kelly: 00:21:33

Yeah, the United States is the largest in the world, and there's plenty of meat on the bone, if you will. And, you know, I'm excited personally about Japan and Korea.

I think they're both really cool markets, and they have some similarities to each other as well. And so I think those are important markets. And ultimately, with our vineyard destination properties, I do vision us making our way to Europe as well.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:21:55

Okay, so is the winery open to the public?

Forrest Kelly: 00:21:58

We did just start releasing a few appointments on toc. Before that, it was available by referral only and word of mouth. And we did that for a few years, and it was really great.

And we wanted to make sure the experience was excellent. And so now that I feel like we've been open for three full years now, it's kind of time to start opening, swinging the gates open a little more.

It's an amazing food and wine experience. Our chef is great. He comes from cooking under Chef Morimoto, Chef Chiarello, and most recently was at the four Seasons before coming to us.

We have a really special food and wine experience.

So for people who are foodies and love wine, and the combination of the two of them, it's really one of the best experiences you can get here in the valley.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:22:43

Did you design the property?

Forrest Kelly: 00:22:45

I was a big part of the experience.

Design the most famous architect in Napa history, Howard Bakken, who recently passed, but 88, who touched over 50 restaurants and some of the most iconic wineries here in Napa, as well as things like restoration, hardware and these amazing architectural things. He's architect of the winery. Another architect, David Rulon, who worked with him for 15 years, helped design the home and then the villa.

On the property is a third architect who's a very talented, up and coming guy here in Nap. My wife Megan, who is our art director and creative director, is the interior designer of all three spaces and worked with all those architects.

And I've rarely ever had as good a product market fit as this property had from day one with opening the home, the winery, and now the last little part, the guest cottage in the back. And you have to see it to really explain it.

I'm sure there's some images around and I've got some recent really great drone footage, but it still doesn't do it justice because the mountains that surround it and the vineyards and.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:23:55

Yeah, when you've got four or five creative minds like that working towards one cause, is there a wow portion? Because whenever you're designing something, you always want that wow.

Forrest Kelly: 00:24:04

The home has a couple different spaces that are that the whole thing is the view that's framed up from the great room and the great room itself. But the tower is probably one of the places that people think about.

And then at the winery there's a place called the Oak Room and it's like Old World barrel cellar in France or Italy meets this modern twist of black plaster and up and down lighting and just a beautiful, beautiful space that kind of captures the best of old world and new world in one space.

And we do really special dinners there ranging from, you know, milestone birthdays and anniversaries to, you know, gathering some of the greatest thinkers of our time together around that table to enjoy wine and dinner and help solve the world's biggest challenges.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:24:48

Do you have.

I know it's a tough one, but the elevator pitch for One Hope wine.com to kind of inspire people to go, not only buy the wine, but to donate and et cetera, et cetera, buy.

Forrest Kelly: 00:24:59

World class wine made in the heart of Napa and bring it to your doorstep while raising money for great cause of your choice in your local community or globally. And be a part of our community that's giving back year round through drinking incredible wine and choosing one host.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:25:17

Okay, last. Last question here. This is the. The heat is on.

If you had to create a wine that was inspired by your personality or your journey with One Hope, what would it be called? 1. And what kind of wine would it be? Would it be something bold and full bodied or maybe a little bubbly with a surprising twist?

Forrest Kelly: 00:25:36

I'd call it R and R for resilient and relentless. And it'd be a Rutherford Old Vine Zinfandel. Leathery and earth and feels like it's gone through all the seasons to get here.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:25:54

Wow. R and R interesting. Not rest and relaxation, but resilient and relentless.

Forrest Kelly: 00:26:01

Yeah, that's what I think of when I think of R and R is like it's not time for rest and relaxation.

A lot of my experience with One Hope has been building and it's really fun and it's really rewarding, but rest and relaxation and at the same time, we've created a space in Napa that's about one of the most peaceful and joyful places in the world. Truly, it's magical and it's got a soul and stuff. And so I'm lucky. If you're gonna.

If you're gonna be relentless and have to be resilient, it's great to do it in a really magical spot, surrounded by beauty and the power of wine and giving back. And I have nothing to complain about, but I think my wine would reflect.

Reflect kind of me as an entrepreneur and me as a builder, and it would have grit, you know.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:26:46

Awesome. It's been a pleasure and hope to get up there sometime. I live here in Southern California near Joshua Tree, you know, a little south.

Jake Kloberdanz: 00:26:54

Of you, but yeah, real pleasure and thank you. Forrest. This is how we've gotten the word out over the years is just people who have taken an interest and used their microphone to share about us.

And I don't take any of it for granted and I'm grateful for all of it.

Forrest Kelly: 00:27:10

In the vineyard where the sunlight shines we're pouring hope with every vibe A glass of joy so, so true Raising love in all we do Every bottle shared Tonight brings the world a little light One hope wine one dream we're changing lives with every sip we rise and thrive Pouring love sharing the dream Together we're stronger than it seems One hope find one heart A cost divine Making the world better One glass at.

Forrest Kelly: 00:27:43

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