The Alimond Show

Nancy Deliso Co-Owner of 868 Estate Vineyards

• Alimond Studio

Share episode

When the idea of turning a hobby into a full-fledged vineyard first sprouted among three families, little did they know it would grow into the award-winning 868 Estate Vineyards. Nestled in the rolling hills of Hillsborough, Virginia, our latest episode uncovers the roots of this multi-family business and the balance of roles that has nurtured its success. As one of the owners joins us, you'll hear the heartfelt story of how personal passions have intertwined with professional endeavors, leading to a Virginia Governor's Cup win and how a pandemic pivot reshaped their business trajectory.

The art of hospitality isn't lost on the team at 868 Estate Vineyards. The challenge of finding and nurturing staff who genuinely embody the vineyard's ethos is real, and our guest reveals the innovative training methods that ensure every visitor feels like part of the family. Delve into the decision-making process behind closing their on-site restaurant to focus on the vineyard's core experiences and the extraordinary measures taken to make holidays like Mother's Day unforgettable for guests. A true testament to their dedication, the brand experience at 868 is a delicate blend of comfort, authenticity, and flexibility.

But there's more to 868 Estate Vineyards than just grapes and good times. Our conversation extends to the wider Loudoun County community, where an extraordinary synergy among local vineyard owners has blossomed, fostering a creative hub for the arts, music, and collective wine-making. Listen to touching experiences that underscore the power of staying present and the magic of kindness, from shared truffle discoveries in the forest to meaningful connections around a bonfire. This episode isn't just a narrative about wine—it's a story about cultivating legacies, building bridges, and the simple, transformative acts of empathy that can resonate well beyond the vineyard's edges.

Speaker 1:

So tell me a little bit about your business and how you got it started.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so I'm one of the owners at 868 Estate Vineyards out in Hillsborough, virginia, and there were originally three families that sort of came up with the idea for a project and I will say that in what this is with my husband, this was not my idea. So my husband is a lawyer and he works many long hours and he doesn't have any hobbies, and so when he said he'd like to start a vineyard, I thought that's fabulous because you're going to have a hobby and I've got kids at home and I love to travel and so that'll be kind of your thing to keep you occupied and busy. And it turns out that he continued to lawyer and there was a need for someone to come in and manage a lot of the day-to-day business part of the vineyard and it's a perfect fit for me and for what I like to do and for my interest and talents, and so it's been a great place to be.

Speaker 1:

So it's kind of like one of those things where, like for me, I'll like start a project and then just kind of hand it off to somebody else.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, pretty much like that, but in a really good way. You know, it's not a bad project that I got handed, but it was not on my radar that this is what I was going to be doing. But we're 12 years in now and my last child is in college.

Speaker 1:

I was going to say how are the kids? Are they involved in it?

Speaker 2:

at all, everyone has worked for the vineyard at some point, as a bar back or as in the kitchen, because at the time we also had a restaurant there, and so each child has worked there have three, and nobody's been fired more than once, you know. So it's been really good. And it's 120 acres, it's in the country and we live in Herndon and have a normal suburban life, and so it's very nice for my children to have had the opportunity to ride ATVs and to hike through the woods on property and to do all of those things. That is more like I grew up doing. I grew up in Mississippi, and so there was a lot more opportunity for those sorts of things than some of the kids have around here. And it's tax deductible yes.

Speaker 1:

Yes, so you've had one of three families, right.

Speaker 2:

Yes, so the other two families.

Speaker 1:

How did they get involved and why do they get?

Speaker 2:

involved. So my husband Peter worked for a long time at a firm with a woman by the name of Wendy, sharon, and so Peter and Wendy wanted to go into business together. So it's the Delisos, my family and the Sharon's Wendy and her husband Chris. And then along the way they found our first wine maker, carl DeManno, and so his family was also a part of the business of the vineyard, even though he's no longer our wine maker. But it's been really a lot of fun and it's worked well, because what you have is my husband Peter, who handles the business end of things, and me I'm the general manager, so I run the day-to-day operations, wendy handles all of our accounting and her husband Chris is our facilities manager. He was in construction and then of course, carl, who at the time was our wine maker, so everybody had a lane.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it sounds like it.

Speaker 2:

And you could have opinions about somebody else's lane or their responsibility, but it was very clear who had responsibility for it, and I think that that's really important when you are in a partnership. If two people really really love marketing, then you're going to set yourself up for okay, who's really in charge, and that has not been the case for our team, and that's really nice. I know that there have been a number of other vineyard partnerships that have fallen apart because too many members of the team were interested in the same area of responsibility.

Speaker 1:

It's always marketing too.

Speaker 2:

Marketing and customer, because it's customer-facing right and that's where a lot of people have a lot of opinions is on how you're going to deal with customers, how you're going to show up with your brand, how you're going to manage events, and so that is. That's an area that could have been an area of contingent, but for us it really it has not, and I'm really blessed that that has been the case.

Speaker 1:

I love that. When it comes to growth, are you guys kind of on the same page? I just feel like it would be so hard. So it's great that businesses who are not just like the sole owner, they've got many hands kind of making those decisions. Are you guys kind of pretty much on the same path when it comes to growth?

Speaker 2:

I would say yes, and certainly when we started 12 years ago, there was an idea of what the growth was going to look like and, as any entrepreneur will tell you right, you're 12 years ago self.

Speaker 2:

It's flexible. It's very, very flexible and you deal with challenges that come along and recalibration of priorities and things like that. But as a team, we have been pretty well aligned on that, which is really nice because there's so many variables in the market. There have been so many variables that it's nice when your team is aligned in terms of how you're going to respond to changes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it does make things easier.

Speaker 2:

Yes, For us one of the highlights of our sort of our journey in this.

Speaker 2:

In February of 2020, we won the Virginia Governor's Cup, which is the highest award you can win in the state of Virginia for wine, and we were down in Richmond at the Gala and you know, pour in wine and we all looked fabulous and it was exciting and all of this. And, as the marketing person, you know, then the following week I'm getting calls from journalists in Chicago. They want to come down and they want to, you know, walk the vineyard and taste the wine and all of this and it's very exciting. And then two weeks later, we were shut down for COVID and so you know that was like one way that the business had to pivot, along with everybody else in the world. And then we've there are things that are outside our control. There was a road project recently in West Virginia that really impacted people's ability to get to us, and the best part about all of those things has been our team has worked together on making sure customers know what they are in for when they come to visit us and that we're all moving the same direction.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, no, I was going to say. I think a lot of businesses have either learned to be flexible either, or pivot.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, right, right, right.

Speaker 1:

Or if they haven't, then they've just not survived.

Speaker 2:

Well and not survived is, I think, in a couple of different ways. Right, because you have to economically survive, because that's how you pay payroll, and that's a very important thing for my staff. But also emotionally survive. Right, and that's really hard because it's stressful having your own business and when you add in all of the outside influences, that impact, I mean you could be doing a good job at what you're doing and it doesn't matter if they close the road and people can't get to you, right? So I think that owning your own business has some stress in it and you have to be able to be flexible but also be at peace with having to have that flexibility.

Speaker 1:

Knowing it's not going to always go the way that you intended Exactly.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, and that it's going to be okay, yeah.

Speaker 1:

That was going to say how, besides COVID, have there been other challenges, hardships over the last 12 years?

Speaker 2:

during this journey. Absolutely, there's certainly hiring staff. I was going to say that's always.

Speaker 1:

So. Everybody says that right, yes, and I understand that, because that would be my number one tail.

Speaker 2:

And when we first started the business we also had a restaurant Granddale Restaurant, and which was much beloved by people out in our side of Loudoun County, and with COVID we closed the restaurant and then we tried to reopen and couldn't find reliable staff to do so and eventually we came to the decision okay, that's not our primary business and staffing is making it too hard and too risky to continue that business. So we decided to not reopen the restaurant and in the winery side we now have a wonderful team. It's been a very stable team for the past two years, where we've got good management in place, we've got good staff in place and we do hire some seasonal people for the summer, but really I'm grateful that I don't have to hire more people than I do, because they are very difficult to find.

Speaker 1:

Good people.

Speaker 2:

Good people who have really a love for the customer, because everybody that I hire in my business is going to be customer facing. Now we have a winemaker and we have vineyard staff and I'm not responsible for them, but everybody that is on my team is customer facing and what that means is they are my brand, they are me on the front line, and so you want them to be excited to be there and to show up with a smile and to have a similar approach to a customer as I would if I were behind the bar, and sometimes that's difficult to find. Can you train that? You can train some of that, like there's one of the training things for us is when a customer walks in the door, they need to be welcomed. Okay, so that's a guideline of behavior for my team, I guess. But how they are welcomed? Are they welcomed with hey, welcome to 868, or hey, we are so glad you're here, come on over, right? So yeah, you can train, welcome the customer. But the warmth I think is innate and that's really hard to find.

Speaker 1:

I laugh because yesterday I'm sure my daughter was telling this. She's like your team, if anybody quits, they're going to be like the owner was just crazy, right, because I was telling my daughter. I was like, yeah, yesterday we literally went through 20 minutes of how to welcome a client when they walk in the door and it's all about the tone and the delivery and the sincerity. And it's not that somebody isn't sincere, it's more of you got to project it Exactly. You have to hear it, feel it, and so, yeah, that's what we were doing yesterday.

Speaker 2:

I understand that and for us, in the space that we occupy in Loudoun County, there's over 50 vineyards in Loudoun County. We're one, right, and every vineyard is different, and that's a good thing, right. And so what I want is for our vineyard to be a reflection of who I am and for people to feel welcomed, no matter who they are. We are not a vineyard where we really feel like we have to educate you online. If you wanna be educated, we can absolutely do that, but what we want you to do is we want you to come and feel like we are a comfortable place to be.

Speaker 2:

When my children were small, my husband was we were gonna celebrate Mother's Day, and so his idea of Mother's Day was take me out to brunch with all three of our children, who were boom, boom, boom. Right, our three children and me at brunch in a restaurant, and that was so, not Mother's Day. So when we started for me because it wasn't it was crazy and chaotic, right, you know, right, I know, okay. So when we started the vineyard and it was time for Mother's Day, what are we gonna do for Mother's Day? I was like you know what? As a mom, what I would want is a picnic table and some wine and some snacks and my children can go play in the grass right and some calm and some quiet, and so those kinds of experiences in my life have really informed how we treat customers and sort of what the vineyard should feel like when you come to see us.

Speaker 1:

I love that you have such a clear vision of not just what your vineyard's gonna look like, but also the client experience.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, because that's critical, and if that's not the experience that you're looking for, I'm fine with that. I can give you. What experience are you looking for?

Speaker 1:

Because I can tell you 49 options.

Speaker 2:

Exactly exactly, and I'm fine with that. We had a wine club member once who came in and he was really frustrated about something that we did in the wine club. He was very frustrated about it, and so he explained to me why he was frustrated about it, and I explained to him why we were gonna continue to do it that way. So I'm so sorry. And so I said you know what, though, I don't think that we're the wine club for you and that's fine, so I can give you three other places that work like you need it to work. So I'm just gonna take you out of our wine club and it's all good and we're gonna part friends. Come back anytime. And he said well, no, I didn't wanna quit the wine club. I'm like no, no, no, we're never gonna meet your expectation. So let's just part friends now. But I have three other vineyards that I can tell you are gonna be perfect for you and I'm all good with that.

Speaker 1:

And you definitely took him by surprise I did, but it's great.

Speaker 2:

And really and truly, he did not need to be a member of our wine club because he had an expectation we were never, ever going to meet.

Speaker 1:

So it was. Again, though, you have such a clear vision. You're not bending your standards. You're not gonna change the way you do business in order to satisfy one person, not because that person didn't matter, but because you have such a clear vision of how you wanna show up and operate.

Speaker 2:

Right. And if I tried to be like everybody else, I got 49 other places to be like and well, my gosh, you would be confusing as to what you stand for what you don't Exactly yeah that's great.

Speaker 1:

now, how did you come to this type of realization and why it's so important to create this brand experience? Was it a prior?

Speaker 2:

No, I mean, I was at home with children and I mean we're talking about creating a customer experience. Right, that's what you do as a mom. Like, here are your customers, there's three of them. What customer experience are you providing? But it's, I was at home. I was. Prior to that, I was in sales and marketing in a telecom company and I think it's just a matter of paying attention to what my experience is out in the world and what feels good to me. And I think for a while we had sort of one vision that we had to pare back a little bit and eventually you kind of find the comfortable spot Like a marble. You know where the marble rolls around and then finds the little hole to fit into, and then that's perfect. That's the right place to be.

Speaker 1:

I like your visuals.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, and one of the nice things about the vineyard industry in Loudoun County and where we are in particular on Harpers Ferry Road and Route 9, we have a group of other vineyard owners that get together. It's the Loudoun Heights Agriturism Council and we are in community with what some people would consider to be our competitors, but we consider them to be our neighbors and so we actually make a wine together. We do a wine every year where we get together and everyone brings their sample and we blend it and then we put it all together and bottle it and sell it at each of the vineyards and it represents the community that we are in in that part of Loudoun County and it's just wonderful. In fact, all of the women owners of the vineyards are having lunch together tomorrow in Percival and I love that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's amazing.

Speaker 2:

So you guys are really creating community out of spaces that aren't necessarily collaborative, exactly exactly, and that's exactly what we stand for, and I just I'm so appreciative to be part of an industry that is like that.

Speaker 1:

What do you hope your winery represents in the community? So that's going to last 20, 30, 50, 150 years on the road.

Speaker 2:

You know, I think that there's a lot of things that we do really well in terms of our customer experience. We have a slogan about wine, art, music and nature and we really look to provide those experiences. So we're lifting people up in the community that are not part of the wine community. For example, we have an art gallery in our tasting room and we have done art shows since the day we opened. We have one right now that is fabulous and wonderful, with three local artists and the lifting up of the artists, giving them a place to share their work. We do a reception for them.

Speaker 2:

We do some events called Artist in Action, where the artist comes and they set up and they are actually making art, where our customers can talk to them and lifting up the artist community. We have two fundraising events that we do each year, one on Memorial Day Sunday and one on Labor Day Sunday, which are fundraisers for different components of the musician community. Our Memorial Day one raises money for musicians with cancer, for an organization called Cancer Can Rock, and our Labor Day one raises money to give grants of equipment to musicians in the community. One of our grant recipients was actually Cilla Campbell, when she was, I think 12 years old, and she's on American Idol this season. So it's that lifting up of other creative arts in the community that I really hope will be part of our lasting legacy.

Speaker 1:

I love that you're consistently showing up for these two different organizations, because that's where it. We always try to pick different ones, but I do actually like consistently showing up for a select.

Speaker 2:

Well, and with the fundraisers that are sort of music focused, we have musicians every single weekend, three musicians a weekend from May through October, and so we are part of that community of people who are trying to make money, earn a living or, you know, side money in Loudoun County and I love to see them thrive and whatever we can do to help them we are all in on.

Speaker 1:

Why do you hear so much about the musician community? Have you?

Speaker 2:

been to a vineyard and listened to music. Yeah, I mean, it's just like okay, this is an experience. This is part of the ambiance of living in Loudoun, you know, and a lot of our musicians. We have musicians who are school teachers and God bless the school teachers Anything I could do to lift them up and that's just such a piece of the fabric. And I think that as people get busier these days and they've got so many entertainment opportunities, people are not as likely to go listen to live music as they would have been, and there is nothing like it. There is just nothing like it. And when the musician is interacting with my customers, you know, as the audience, it's just, it's truly magic.

Speaker 1:

Sounds like it's very near and dear to your heart.

Speaker 2:

Just listening to your life, absolutely Just talking about it, just like to go out.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Almost emotional. I'm feeling like when you talk about it.

Speaker 2:

And it's. It is, and because we've seen and like with, for example, cilla Campbell, we do a program called Rising Stars and these are all kids that are usually 16 or under that have a talent right and they don't necessarily have money to go hone that talent or share that talent right. Yeah, so by providing them with a gig system, they can go and play at their middle school dance. And what does that do for the confidence of a young woman to be able to play music for her middle school dance? Yeah, and it's just wonderful.

Speaker 1:

Have you ever performed any way, shape or form, music?

Speaker 2:

Oh, well, you know, I was in band.

Speaker 1:

I was a band kid in high school.

Speaker 2:

I was not part of the cool crowd. I was in the band kids. You know and not you know, not by myself, that's not my thing.

Speaker 1:

But you have a yeah absolutely.

Speaker 2:

I grew up musical. I grew up in, you know, yes, where music was part of my life Absolutely, and I have a daughter who's a banjo player, so it's weird in there a little bit Exactly.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. Where do you see? Where do you see you guys flourishing over the next two, three years? So kind of a short term.

Speaker 2:

You know, one of the things that we are really focused on or interested in is, at the moment we make about 4,000 cases of wine a year. So we have 21 acres of grapes and we sell mostly on site. So if you want wine from 868, then you need to come to 868. And that's fabulous, because then we have that customer touch point and all of those wonderful things that we've talked about. But we would love to expand our wholesale program because we are at the point where we could make more wine but we're having to sell grapes because we can't sell more on site. So we would love to be more in restaurants, we would love to be in more of a community opportunity with our wine, and so that's definitely on our radar. It's difficult to have the time to do everything, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2:

I answered another project, another project, yes, so there is that. And I think just paying attention to other trends in wine. So, for the example, last year for the first time we made wine seltzers, which we had not done before. We have a sparkling wine program now, which we had not had before, and so finding some of those niches where we are not making 200 cases of it, we're making 20 cases of it and you either get it or you don't, and those nimble little pops of something special, and I love that, and I think that that's a program that we can expand and really fine tune and come up with some amazing things from the winery.

Speaker 1:

I love that, yeah, so much fun. So just to kind of before we wrap things up, who are you as a person?

Speaker 2:

Oh well, that's a very difficult one, because I mean, right, who are you as a person? Right, you have a small business owner, mom, even no matter how old your children are. Right, community person. So I love what I do at the vineyard. My passion is travel. I love to travel. Last year there was a period of time about six months when I did not possess a plane ticket and that was very uncomfortable for me. Good news I have three in my hand right now, so I'm good, I'm feeling okay about that. But I love to travel and I love new experiences, particularly experiences that involve food.

Speaker 2:

There's for a long time my husband had a client in Sweden and he would invite me to go to Stockholm. I was like, no, there's nothing there I want to eat. So why would I go to Stockholm? And then finally, one year, it was like you got to come to Stockholm and I went. I was like, oh wait, a second, it's really delicious here. I got to come to Stockholm places that I'm not interested in, the food, I'm not interested in traveling. So that's really I travel by my stomach, I suppose. And then, second to that is all of the landscape and the rest of it. But so that's a passion of mine. I'm active in my church. I'm a part of Methodist Church in Herndon. I'm very active in that and in with my friends, and that's really what. And my children, of course, you know, but they're older and out of the house, so that's that's sort of wraps up, nancy, right.

Speaker 1:

Where what's one of the best places that you've traveled.

Speaker 2:

Wow, let me share with you an experience, okay, which happened to be in Italy. All right, so I love Europe, in particular, and I Madeira, the island of Madeira, which is owned by Portugal and Portugal and Germany. I went, I was a Fulbright scholar, so I spent a year in Germany and I love that. But I had this opportunity to go to a a traveled, a tour, a tour of, in Italy, and I'd never taken an organized group tour before, and because that kind of scares me, because I like to do my own thing, but I signed up for it and it is what I would call food adventure camp. Okay, so we, we harvested olives and then took them to the mill and made olive oil. We went to a vineyard and we, you know, understood how they made wine at that particular vineyard.

Speaker 2:

We went truffle hunting with, with dogs in a forest and it was magic. Everything about it was magic. So when we were going to go truffle hunting with the dogs, it was pouring down rain and we need to take our little van up to the forest, and then we get there and the rain stopped and there was a break in the clouds and a sunbeam came through and hit this mountain in the distance, which was it was fall, so it was all fall colors and just being there and the smell of the forest and the dogs and the experience, and those are the things that just my goodness I could, I so excite me. That is, that is the experience, and that experience could have happened many places. It happened to be in Italy, so that's one of my favorite memories.

Speaker 1:

That's beautiful. You just took me there. In like three seconds I could smell the the fresh rain.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

And I could feel the sun kind of like reflect Wow.

Speaker 2:

And then, and then we did the walk, you found truffles and everything, and then, as we came out of the forest, on the other side there was a bonfire set up and picnic tables and we had wine and around the bonfire. And those kinds of experiences are are really meaningful to me because of because you're having to take the time to be in that moment and nobody was on their phone, nobody was thinking about what work had not yet been done at the, at the office, and it's those moments are rare and I'm really grateful and appreciative that I could identify that and be fully there.

Speaker 1:

It sounds like you appreciate it so much that you're trying to integrate those in different ways within your winery as well. Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome, and if you could give one piece of advice to the world, what would that advice be?

Speaker 2:

Oh, wow, that's a. That's a. That's a challenging question, you know, I think you know, and this sounds so trite and I'm so sorry because I wish that I had something that did not sound this succinct and trite. But kindness is my thing and I think being kind to the server at the way at the restaurant that you're at, being kind to the poor people who happen to be behind the counter at the airport when your flight's been canceled, being kind in all situations and realizing it's not all about you, I think that that's really my, my piece of advice for for people, and even if it doesn't make your situation better, it maybe has made somebody else's situation better and that's enough. That's should be plenty, that's beautiful.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for being on the show and sharing at your beautiful stories. Thank you so much for having me. It was a delight.