Jill Bauer thinks inside (and outside) the box

The CEO of Tindindi Cellars on packaging, partnerships, and why a great wine doesn’t need to come in a bottle.

WINE IN A BOX? IT’S ALSO CALLED CASK WINE; IT’S BIG IN AUSTRALIA, WHERE THEY PUT REALLY good wine in three-liter boxes that use new, superior storage technology. Jill Bauer is CEO of Tindindi Cellars (www.tindindi.com), an Australian-based company created to export the concept to the U.S. market—a tough sell, she admits, that got a big boost through a distribution deal with Costco. This ex pat is a Seattle native who started her working life in the Big Apple as a marketing executive at Food & Wine magazine. But the big-city blues left her pining for a simpler life in the vineyards—or close to them, at least—and that’s where she is today.

How did you go from publishing to being a wine entrepreneur?
I always loved the wine industry and had a lot of exposure to it in my job at Food & Wine. I loved my job there, but I knew it was time for me to move out of New York City.The transition was made easier because I got a job at the Minar Family Winery in Napa. I worked for a winemaker named Gary Brookman; he was very open to letting me learn as much as I could.

My life plan was to go to Australia, get my education, move back to Napa and continue working in the wine industry. I moved to South Australia and started school at Adelaide University, which has a master’s course in wine marketing. It’s an intensive marketing and business course, but you also learn viticulture and winemaking. You get exposed to all elements of the wine industry; their feeling is that to talk fluently about wine, you need to know how it’s made, how grapes are grown, and climate—which all helps you understand the product.

On the personal side, my second day in Australia I met my now-husband, Andrew Beaven. He’s from a farming family in a wine-growing region, so he grew up in the Australian wine industry. We decided to try something on our own, so we opened up a distribution, export and marketing company in 2001. We’re not the winemakers, but we are involved in the final blending process so we can get the wine to the flavor profile we want.We work with a winemaker who’s been making wine for 30 years. We put together the concept and the package.

Was box wine popular in Australia when you started?
About 52 percent of the market in Australia is box wine. They’re leagues ahead of America in the quality of wine available in a cask. But it’s a fairly new concept in America—putting premium wine in a cask.

The first advantage is that when you open a cask, it stays fresh six to eight weeks without oxidizing.If you open a bottle, it oxidizes after one or two days. So, a cask gives you flexibility as to when and if you drink wine, without worrying about wasting it. Also, cork taint is a big issue—it’s a natural compound existing in corks, and it’s estimated one in 12 bottles are affected. If you open a bottle and there’s a musty, wet cardboard smell, chances are it’s cork-tainted. Some wines have a minimal cork taint most people wouldn’t pick up, but the wine tastes “off.” That’s not an issue with cask wine.

Did your company target the U.S. from the start?
Tindindi was the second company we started, and it was wholly aimed at the U.S. market.We deal primarily with small, boutique bottled wines with our company in Australia, but we really looked at the American market—where it was going, where there might be a gap to fill.We were closely watching Black Fox, a California company with cask wine. Then I created a marketing and brand plan for an Australian product from a small producer, with limited volume to start off, and we went from there.

Was there resistance in the U.S. to box wine?
It’s slowly becoming more in vogue, and distributors now are looking for premier box wines. The media has covered it very positively, and Black Fox did an excellent job getting the word out and creating a great product. But it’s an uphill battle when we’re talking to consumers, telling them we put this great wine in a box. They look at you like you’ve got two heads.

Every day my job is getting out into the market and talking to people, explaining that what we’ve done is a benefit to them: They can keep it on their counter—or the white in their fridge—and have six to eight weeks versus two days to drink it. Once people understand that, they’re more open to it.

How did you get Costco as a distributor?
A buyer there was keen on the idea and had been looking for a premium cask wine. We didn’t have packaging or anything put together at that point; I just had the concept and marketing plan. Through a broker in Seattle, I was able to schedule a meeting with this buyer. We sat down, and I looked at him straight and said, “I can guarantee we will give you the absolute best wine in a cask.” He said, “We’ll see.” So, I sent him samples of wine, and he thought it was outstanding. We went through months of taste trials at all levels of Costco management. We sent wine in both the bottle and the box so they could make sure what we were saying was true, and that the plastic bag that holds the wine in the box didn’t impart any taste to it.

Was Costco a big breakthrough?
It was huge. To do this, we needed a company that could offer volume sales. We couldn’t start off doing a case here, a case there; to be a small company and get this off the ground, it required a partner like Costco.

What advice would you give entrepreneurs trying to break into a new market without a lot of capital?
The biggest things are research and partnership. What’s been critical to us is finding people in the market who are as passionate as you, who believe in what you’re doing as much as you do. And research, research—I spent considerable time looking at what we were doing, who we were working with and how to bring it to market most effectively. If we hadn’t spent as much time doing that, we would have made so many mistakes—not to say we haven’t made any. But you pick yourself up, say, “OK, I won’t do that again,” and you get through it.

What are your future plans for Tindindi?
We want to expand distribution. My vision is that in the future, whether it’s Tindindi or some other box wine, American culture will embrace cask wine as its house wine, and we’ll be in all 50 states. We plan to bring our Shiraz here and maybe expand our white offerings with Sauvignon Blanc. Right now we have just Cabernet and Chardonnay. We wanted to start small—if no one was going to embrace it in the beginning, we didn’t want to be overly invested.

Tell me about your travel patterns.
We travel a lot between Australia and America—mostly the West Coast now, but we plan to break into Chicago, New York, Florida and Texas; every state where we sell, we’ll have to be there. It’s a bit scary—especially because I have a one-year-old daughter. We’ll probably be over here at least every two months between the two of us.

How do you cope with jet lag?
I try to ignore it. The flight is no fun no matter how you look at it, but our goals—building our brand and our company—are so much bigger to us than jet lag. I do get tired when I get over here, but I just try to power through it. We both take Airborne; we hope it at least staves off the colds and such from traveling.

What kind of technology do you use when you travel?
My phone and my laptop—that’s how I stay connected. I use wireless Internet, especially in airports when you can sit down and work or send emails. If you’re spending 14 hours on a flight, you can draft lots of emails, then, when you get in the airport or a hotel with wireless technology, just zip the card into your computer and send them all off.

Are you looking forward to inflight email access?
That will be fantastic. But I tell you, there’s a certain amount of luxury when you get on a flight now and nobody can contact you. I do look forward—particularly when I’m by myself—to having 14 hours of quiet time.

When I travel by myself, I take my music with me. I need an iPod, but now I just use a CD player with Bose headphones.We normally fly Qantas, and we’ve had outstanding service. Having a one-year-old, I don’t get to many movies, so I try and catch up by seeing five of them on one flight.

Also, I meet lots of people while I’m traveling. Since we’re a small company and don’t have a huge marketing budget, word of mouth is very important. So, if I’m sitting next to people, I’ll talk to them about what I’m doing, give them a brochure, tell them about the wines and about our Web site and hope that might make a difference.