Latest / Family Business Stories with Fexingo: Succession, Legacy, and Multi-Generational Companies / How a Single Recipe Kept the Sutter Home Winery in the Trinchero Family
Transcript
- Lucas: So here's a number I love — 50 million cases a year. That's roughly how much wine Sutter Home sells annually. And it's almost all one color: pink. Luna: White zinfandel. The wine that isn't really white, and isn't really zinfandel in the traditional sense, but somehow became America's most popular pink drink. Lucas: Exactly. And the family behind it — the Trincheros — they almost didn't make it past the 1970s. Today we're picking apart one specific decision that saved their business. Luna: The accidental invention of white zinfandel. Lucas: Right. But to understand why it was an accident, you need to know a little about the family first. The Trincheros are Italian-American, from New York. They bought Sutter Home in 1948 for about $16,000. Luna: That's around $200,000 in today's money — cheap by Napa standards even then. Lucas: Cheap partly because the winery was essentially a wreck. It had been boarded up since Prohibition. Bob Trinchero, the son, took over operations in the late fifties. And for the next decade or so, they made pretty good red wines — nothing huge, but respected. Luna: Then the early seventies hit, and the wine business got tough. Big producers like Gallo and Mondavi were scaling up fast. Lucas: So Bob was stuck with a problem. He had all this zinfandel grape juice, which he'd planned to ferment into red wine. But the fermentation got stuck — it stopped too early, leaving a lot of residual sugar. Luna: Stuck fermentation was a common headache for small wineries. Usually you'd dump it, blend it off, or try to restart it. Lucas: Bob did something different. He let the juice sit on the skins for a short time — maybe a few hours — then pressed it off. The result was a pale pink liquid with some sweetness. He bottled it anyway, called it Oeil de Perdrix — that's French for 'eye of the partridge' — and sold it locally. Luna: Oeil de Perdrix was the traditional name for a very light red wine from Switzerland. Bob was basically making a rosé, but rosé wasn't a category in America back then. Lucas: Exactly. And it didn't sell well at first. But Bob's brother, Roger, who handled marketing, had an idea. They renamed it 'white zinfandel' — which is technically an oxymoron, because zinfandel is a red grape. Luna: That name change was brilliant. It hinted at something familiar — zinfandel was a known varietal — but also new, because white wine was seen as more approachable. Lucas: They put it in a clear bottle, priced it competitively, and by the late 1970s, it started catching on. Then in 1980, a drought hit California, and red wine grapes were scarce. Bob needed to move volume. Luna: So he doubled down on white zinfandel. Started producing it in serious quantities. Lucas: And the market responded. By 1985, Sutter Home was selling a million cases a year. By 1990, ten million. By the early 2000s, it was the best-selling wine brand in the United States. Luna: And all from a single accidental product. But where does the family dynamic come in? Because it's not just Bob's story. Lucas: Bob and Roger were a classic duo — the winemaker and the salesman. Bob focused on production, Roger on distribution. They were brothers, but they had very different temperaments. Luna: I read that Bob was quiet, almost introverted. Roger was the extrovert who could sell ice to Eskimos. Lucas: That's exactly right. And that tension almost tore the business apart. Bob wanted to make premium wines. Roger wanted to sell to the masses. The white zinfandel pivot was a compromise — it let Bob use his winemaking skills in a way that also filled Roger's sales pipeline. Luna: But compromise only works if both sides feel heard. Did they? Lucas: For a long time, yes. They had a handshake agreement: Bob ran the winery, Roger ran the business. No contracts. Just trust. And it worked for twenty years. Luna: Then came the second generation. Bob's son, also named Bob Jr., joined in the late 1980s. Roger's children came in later. And suddenly you had cousins who didn't share the same memories or the same trust. Lucas: That's where a lot of family businesses stumble. The founders have implicit understanding. The next generation needs explicit structure. Luna: So what did the Trincheros do? Lucas: They created a family council. A formal board. They brought in outside advisors. And they wrote down a succession plan that spelled out who could own shares, who could work in the business, and how decisions would be made. Luna: That sounds sensible, but it also sounds like it could create resentment. 'You have to earn your seat at the table.' Lucas: It did cause friction. There's a famous story about Bob Jr. wanting to launch a premium label, a higher-end wine, but Roger's side pushed back — they said it would dilute the brand. And they were right, but Bob Jr. felt stifled. Luna: So he left. He started his own winery, called Trinchero Family Estates — wait, no, that's the parent company. He started something separate? Lucas: He actually stayed, but he created a new brand within the company called 'Main Street Wines' or something like that. I'm simplifying. The point is, the family found a way to let the next generation innovate without cannibalizing the core business. Luna: And that core business is still white zinfandel. Sutter Home sells more than 50 million cases a year, and white zinfandel accounts for the vast majority. Lucas: Which brings us to the legacy question. The Trinchero family could have cashed out in the 1990s. Constellation Brands, Gallo, someone would have paid top dollar. Luna: But they didn't. Why? Lucas: Because the family identity is tied to the land, to the brand. Bob used to say, 'We're not in the wine business. We're in the family business.' And that meant preserving something for the next generation, not just maximizing profit. Luna: It's a romantic idea, but it also makes financial sense. The brand equity they've built is enormous. Nobody could pay them enough to compensate for losing control. Lucas: Exactly. And today, the third generation is starting to take over. Bob Jr.'s children and Roger's grandchildren are working in the business. They've diversified into other wines — they own the Folie à Deux brand, they make sparkling wines. Luna: But the flag bearer is still that pink bottle. The one that almost didn't exist. Lucas: That's the thing about family business decisions — sometimes the most consequential one is the one you barely think about. Bob Trinchero didn't set out to create a category. He just didn't want to dump a batch of juice. Luna: And that pragmatism, that willingness to solve a problem rather than stick to a plan, is a through line in a lot of these stories. Lucas: Before we wrap, a quick honest thing. This show is made possible by listeners who chip in a few dollars a month at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's it — no ads, no sponsors. If these conversations have moved your work forward in some small way, that community is what keeps us going. Luna: Yeah, it's a small group but it makes a real difference. And we keep every episode free because of it. Lucas: So, back to the Trincheros. The lesson I keep coming back to is that a single product can define a family for generations. But it's the structure around it — the family council, the succession plan — that lets that product outlive the founders. Luna: Would you buy a white zinfandel now? I mean, it's not exactly trendy. Lucas: Not my go-to, but I'd order one if I were sitting in a diner in 1985. It's a time capsule. And that's kind of the point — some family businesses build for nostalgia, others build for the future. The Trincheros managed to do both.