The art , science of winemaking at Kanzler Vineyards

Alum’s planned ‘ski year’ leads to a career in wine

By Laura Kriho

Alex Kanzler was the type of young prospective student about whom college recruiters dream: After his first tour of the University of Colorado Boulder campus, he went right to the Admissions Department and signed his letter of intent to attend CU.

“I was hooked from the get-go,” he remembers. “I went from the tour straight to the Bursar’s office and signed my letter of intent to register, then I went straight to the housing office and signed up for freshman housing, then I went straight to the CU Bookstore and bought a sweatshirt.”

The beauty of the mountains, the large variety of outdoor activities and the friendly people were enough to quickly convince Kanzler that Colorado was the place for him.

There is a really interesting social structure and pecking order in wineries. It’s very hierarchical. In some wineries, it’s almost military. You have the general up in the office with the clipboard, then you have the drill sergeant down with the interns, and then you have your second lieutenants in the lab making calls."Even though Kanzler grew up in California wine country, it was not his dream to make wine-making a career. He always intended to become a high school teacher.

With a double major in sociology and history, Kanzler worked hard to excel at his studies and found the CU culture supportive. “The academic environment at CU was excellent,” he said. “I had smaller classes than any of my peers at the larger state schools in California, and I never had a problem getting the classes I needed.”

In 2008, Kanzler graduated and was faced with a tough decision common to many CU graduates: Should he go straight into the workforce or take a “ski year” to live in the mountains and ski for a season?

“I had talked to way too many successful professionals on ski lifts around the mountain, and every single professional I talked to, that said they took a ski year to live in the mountains, said it was the greatest decision they ever made, and every one that said they didn’t do it, said they really regretted it. So I took that advice to heart and wanted to move up to mountains for a year.”

However, it was June, and the ski areas weren’t hiring yet, so Kanzler looked to his past for ideas for temporary work. “From my background and where I grew up, there was an obvious answer, which was harvest. Wineries more than triple their staff during those three months where grapes are harvested and processed,” he said. “During harvest, there is so much work, it’s called ‘crush’ for a reason. You’re not just crushing grapes, you’re really getting crushed by the grapes.”

So Kanzler went back to California and got a job at a winery near Sonoma. He then took his “ski year” at Lake Tahoe that winter. Kanzler was excited about the possibilities that working during grape harvest season afforded him. The work was flexible and allowed him to travel, so he took the next couple of years to “chase harvests around the world,” working at harvests in New Zealand, then in Oregon, and then back to California.



The internships were a lot of hard work, but the interns also enjoyed themselves too. “We have a saying in the wine industry that winemaking is 49 percent cleaning stuff, 49 percent moving heavy stuff around, and 2 percent drinking beer. It takes a lot of beer to make good wine. After a hard day of winemaking, nobody wants a glass of wine after work.”

The experience of being an intern in a winery greatly affected Kanzler and may inspire him to future graduate-level research. “I have a dream to write an ethnography about the international intern scene at wineries,” he said.

“There is a really interesting social structure and pecking order in wineries. It’s very hierarchical. In some wineries, it’s almost military. You have the general up in the office with the clipboard, then you have the drill sergeant down with the interns, and then you have your second lieutenants in the lab making calls. There are actually a lot of interesting social things going on in a winery that I’d like to study formally.”

When Kanzler ended up back in California in 2009, he decided to try to make wine-making his permanent career. However, the economy had slowed down, and it was more difficult to find permanent work. In April 2012, took a job as a cellar master in VML Winery in California’s Russian River Valley. Using the knowledge he had acquired during his internships, he was able to work his way up to associate winemaker in two and a half years.

During this same period, Kanzler’s family wine-making operation had been growing. In 2011, he took over the entire wine-making operation at Kanzler Vineyards and worked there concurrently with his job at VML Winery.

In the future, he plans to resign his position at VML to work for Kanzler Vineyards full-time. Kanzler Vineyards has doubled its production since 2011, with about 1,500 cases projected for 2015. Kanzler’s goal is to produce about 3,000 cases per year, which is “big enough to hit a lot of different markets, but small enough to be still be hands-on, craftsmen-driven, and artisanal.”

While some question the value of a liberal arts degree from the College of Arts and Sciences, Kanzler felt his degree prepared him well for his current career. “Winemaking is a craft. It’s very much a blend of art and science,” he explained.

“CU turned me into an adult. It gave me an amazing foundation to be both a successful employee and employer.”



When asked what advice he would give to current CU students, Kanzler did not hesitate: “I would tell them to try anything once. You’re only in college once. Join a club or go to an event, even if it’s only marginally interesting. You never know what is going to grab you. Even if you have to do it by yourself and it seems scary, just go do it, because you never know what you’re going to get out of it.”

He would also advise new students to “take advantage of all the resources that are there. Everybody there wants to see you succeed, and they will give you every tool possible. But at the end, it all comes down to you. If you can get that blend of personal responsibility while leaning on all those resources, you will be in an amazing position to succeed.”

Laura Kriho is web and publications coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences.

Feb. 27, 2015