GREENFIELD — Al Scheid’s influence over the Central Coast winegrape growing industry has been instrumental over the past several decades, from co-founding two prominent winegrape grower organizations to developing his own namesake company into a full-fledged winery operation in Greenfield.
His leadership legacy has not gone unnoticed. The visionary pioneer and chairman of Scheid Vineyards Inc. was recently named the 2017 Leader of the Year by the California Association of Winegrape Growers (CAWG), which also selected Bradford and Randall Lange of LangeTwins Family Winery and Vineyards in Acampo, Calif., as the 2017 Grower of the Year.
“Al, Bradford, Randall and their families are exceptional role models with their forward-thinking and sustainable winegrape growing practices,” said CAWG President John Aguirre in a news release. “They have also gone above and beyond as powerful advocates for winegrape industry issues. We are grateful to them for their decades-long involvement with CAWG and all that they have done for our organization.”
The Leader of the Year award recognizes a grower who is not only an inspiration to others, but also whose record of exceptional leadership has benefitted California’s wine industry. According to the association, the recipient has “demonstrated an outstanding commitment to issues of significant importance to winegrape growers and has achieved lasting changes to promote and protect the interests of California winegrape growers.”
Scheid embodies this description perfectly.
In 1974, Scheid was one of the co-founders of CAWG and served on the board for the next 12 years, including as chairman from 1978 to 1979. During that time, he advocated for the Grape Crush Report, an industry tool for providing agricultural statistics, and spent many years involved in issues pertaining to the report.
“It was a bit wild for the first 15 years of CAWG, with no shortage of adventures,” Scheid said in an article published in the June 2017 issue of The Crush, a publication of CAWG.
In those early years, Scheid helped the association overcome the challenge of growing its membership and raising funds. He and then-president Bob Hartzell embarked on a successful membership drive.
According to CAWG, their work was supported by the association’s early leaders, including Jerry Fry, Ron Metzler, John Kautz and John Ledbetter, who understood the value of its mission to “protect and promote the interests of California winegrape growers by providing members a unified voice, effective advocacy and strong leadership.”
“Al played a significant role in the early stages of CAWG,” Fry said in The Crush article. “He gave us perspectives from his outside business experiences we may not have had as an organization of strictly winegrape growers. Al believed in a unified wine business and worked diligently to achieve that goal. Al and his family have continued to be at the forefront of CAWG leadership.”
In addition to CAWG, Scheid also was a founding member of the Monterey County Vintners and Growers Association and was the first grower to join Wine Institute in the mid-1970s.
After graduating from Harvard Business School, Scheid — an investment banker at the time — first bought land in Monterey County in 1972. For 15 years he operated Monterey Farming Corporation, a partnership that sold its production to large wineries for use in their own brands. By the early 1990s, he bought out the partners and acquired an additional vineyard.
Today, Scheid Vineyards owns 11 estate vineyards totaling 4,000 acres in the Salinas Valley, a state-of-the-art winery with a crushing capacity of over 30,000 tons and a smaller winery for the boutique Scheid label.
Over the years Scheid Vineyards became a family business, with Scheid’s children joining the operation: Scott, president and CEO, joined in 1986; Heidi, senior vice president, joined in 1992; and Tyler, project manager, joined in 2011. He also considers longtime employees Kurt Gollnick, chief operating officer since 1988, and Dave Nagengast, director of winemaking since 2002, as part of the Scheid family.
Scheid said he was honored to receive the Leader of the Year award.
“As a founder of the organization, the second chairman and longtime board member, I know the honor of the recognition,” he said. “Having been off the board for about 30 years makes being selected all the more gratifying.”
He continued, “Scheid Vineyards believes deeply in the important role CAWG plays as the united voice of the grape grower. As a company, we have committed substantial time and energy to the CAWG mission — first me, then Kurt, Scott, Heidi and now Tyler serving as active and engaged board members since CAWG’s inception. We all served gladly and with pride. I thank the board of CAWG for bestowing this honor.”
Scheid will be presented with the award at the 2017 CAWG Awards of Excellence Program on July 17 in Napa, Calif.
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Meredith Ritchie of CAWG contributed to this article.
