From waiter to winemaker — Jason Moore
Founder & winemaker of Modus Operandi Cellars
My wife and I were talking, and she says to me, “You know Jason, I know you think that real estate is your thing, but it’s pretty obvious that you’re not about that. So try to figure out what you’re passionate about, and make a career out of that.”
So we throw some ideas around, and she was like, “How about wine? You’ve always loved wine.” And that was literally an epiphany moment — a light bulb went off over my head and I was just like, “Oh my God, I want to become a winemaker.”
So I’m 21 years old, partying like crazy, with a bright idea of being a winemaker with no roots in the industry and no money to do it. Still — six weeks later, my wife and I had a three week long garage sale — we sold everything we owned to move to California to pursue the dream.
Literally the day before moving — everything was packed in the Civic already — I was working my last night at this awesome restaurant in Dallas. I was in the kitchen about to run some food out, and one of the other servers comes to the kitchen and says, “Dude, you’re the luckiest waiter in Dallas right now.”
I go set this table — there’s like six or seven people — and right away, the first thing the guy ordered was a $450 bottle of Burgundy, and then he goes on to get Le Pin, Petrus, Mouton, ’82, ’89 — all the classic vintages. And then, like two tables over, I had a guy trying to impress his hot date — they had two bottles of Shafer Hillside. So I literally left the restaurant — I mean, we had probably $1000 in our account and we’re stressing out because we’re moving to California the next day — I walked out of there with like 2400 bucks cash.
And it was wine that made it possible. To me, that was like God saying, “Go forth my son. You’re doing the right thing.”
So now I’m in Napa working at this restaurant. I went to a tasting with the staff and one of my buddies was like, “Hey Jason, you should go ask that guy over there — I just overheard he has a vineyard… you should ask him if you can get some fruit from him. He may not want the second crop or whatever.”
So at first I was like, “No… that’s weird, I don’t want to be the creepy weird guy,” but for some reason, I just had this… courage to go and ask the guy, so I did.
I said, “Sir, I understand you have a vineyard. I’m studying to be a winemaker. Do you think I can maybe come to your property? I would be happy to hand pick any fruit you don’t want. I’ll pick it myself, take it to my apartment in Davis and ferment it in my closet. I don’t care how good or bad the fruit is, I just want to go through the process of making wine.”
He just kind of paused and was like, “Wow, I’ll tell you what, kid. I bought this property as an investment property for the house. I have no idea what to do with those grapes, so you can have the whole vineyard. You don’t have to do it in your closet — I got a three car garage. I’ll buy you everything you need to make the wine, and we’ll just split 50–50 when we bottle it.”
That doesn’t happen in Napa… like some guy is going to just give me his fruit, really? But he was for real, and I actually ended up making wine in his garage for two harvests. It was a perfect classroom for me.
I had no one over my shoulder, telling me what to do and when to do it. I had to connect those theory dots myself, and apply them to the wines I was making in this guy’s garage. It was amazing — when I had problems, issues with the fermentation, theories I needed to test, I would put these emails together to all these different wine making mentors. But instead of asking, “Hey, here’s my problem. What’s the answer,” it was more like “Hey, I have this problem, this is the research I’ve done, and this is what I’ve learned about this technique and this particular topic in winemaking. Here’s what I think I should do. Can you let me know if I’m on the right track?”
I think they really appreciated the fact that I did the homework, so I got a lot of replies back because of that. When the answers came in, it was so cool to see that when everyone was asked the same question, no two answers were the same.
So I realized, if you ask 100 different winemakers how to make wine, like you can literally get 200 different answers, because there is more than one right way to do the things that we do. I feel like winemaking is an art form that’s supported by science. So yeah, it was awesome.
Editor’s note
Winemakers are like these mythical creatures capable of turning agriculture into liquid pleasure. Don’t you ever wonder where they come from? In Jason’s case, apparently Dallas, a bit of luck, and a whole lot of grit to grab onto that luck. Hell, I went to see Jason mostly because he had a nice car and an interesting name for his wine brand, but what a story it turned out to be. I’ve always just sort of assumed people either got a winemaking degree from UC Davis, or come from a family of winemakers, but to go from waiting tables to owning labels… that’s pretty cool.
As for his wine, what really stood out for me was how “handcrafted” they tasted. I know, I know, but with fine wine… like music, art, and literature, context matters. Here’s a dude that took the uncommon road so he could make the wine he wanted to make. Jason’s wines don’t have the polish of an Opus One, but that’s exactly what I like about them. He does weird high-end wizardry like ferment in new French oak barrels (most ferment in stainless steel and only age in oak), so you end up with a wine with every bit the quality and complexity of big brands, but with a handcrafted roughness to them that just makes them seem different. And considering the thousands of wine brands just in Napa, different is great.
You can go check out the Modus Operandi Cellars website and Twitter (or call him on his cell with the number on the back label to schedule a tasting), but you knew that already. Here’s something you might not know: Gary Vaynerchuk interviewed Jason way back in 2010 for Cork’d (an old project of Gary’s) — check it out below.
