Kathy Byrd, Woodward Canyon

Earlier this month, Woodward Canyon named Kathy Byrd as Woodward Canyon’s new general manager and vice president. Byrd brings over 30 years of experience to one of Washington’s oldest wineries. She has worked in distribution and sales. For the last eight years, she has had her own consulting company, Real Wine Alliance.

Here, I talk to Byrd about her love of storytelling, how she got into the wine industry, why she started Real Wine Alliance, what’s next for Woodward Canyon, and how wineries can find their way through these turbulent times. Answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Where did your interest in storytelling originate?

I was an English major at University of Wisconsin. I’ve always loved to read. I’m a person who loved reading stories and writing about them and thinking about them.

What job does being an English major who minored in Italian and history actually make the perfect connection? It’s the wine business! The wine business has allowed me to do all those things. It was everything I wanted to do, all wrapped into one. It’s all about storytelling.

How did you first become involved in the wine industry?

I had a friend who I was a roommate with in college, and she had gotten a job at Left Bank Wine Company in Wisconsin. She said, ‘You really need to get a job in distribution. You love this because all I do is go out and sell wine and tell stories, and you love to tell stories.’

But at that time in Chicago, it was really hard to get a job working for a distributor. So I took some classes at the Chicago Wine School. Then at the same time, I worked for a caterer as their sales manager, just to get a bit of experience under my belt. Finally, the perfect distributor for me hired me. That’s how it all started.

What made you decide to leave the distribution world and start your own consulting company, Real Wine Alliance?

I just kept having the same conversations with people, particularly in Washington, about distribution. One thing that wineries sometimes don’t see at first is, when you go into distribution, it’s almost like you’re starting a whole new business. It requires the same thought and the same planning that you have on the direct-to-consumer side except it’s to a completely different audience. It’s an audience that is more wine savvy and that has a limited attention span because there’s so much information coming at them at all times.

You can’t just check the boxes. You can’t just say we’ve got good scores. People have not been to your winery. They haven’t met all the fun people in your tasting room. They don’t know anything about you when they’re buying your wine at a retail store. So how are you going to get your story that’s so compelling to these people that have so much information coming to them?

Overall, I kept noticing that people were just having a hard time figuring that piece out, and they were frustrated. I thought I might be able to help.

Talk to me about your early priorities at Woodward.

Every winery really has their own recipe for success, but boy, it sure helps