Wine Immersion Success Stories – Steve Lau & Stan Erker

What's Your Next Move?
Wine Immersion Can Help You Make It

Steve Lau always had music running through his veins. First a successful musician and then the founder of the Manhattan-based Kinetic Records label, he loved his work. But when conglomeration of the music industry led to more politics and less creativity, he sold his company and began asking himself, "What's next?"

Stan Erker grew up on a third-generation, 4,000-acre sustainable farm in northeast Colorado. He had a successful career in real estate, but when the market in Denver began to wane and his natural wanderlust kicked in, he, too, began wondering what the next chapter in his life would bring.

An auspicious meeting of this entrepreneurial-minded pair led to a trip to Europe, where their shared enthusiasm for wine quickly turned to discussions of wine as a way of life. Steve and Stan knew more or less what they wanted in a wine career, and began researching wine education programs as a way to get there. They soon discovered the CIA's Wine Immersion program. Its compressed schedule, Napa Valley location, and focus on both the foundations and the business side of wine made it the ideal choice.

Less than two years after completing the program, Stan and Steve are the proud owners of Volta, which specializes in limited-production wines made from sustainably grown grapes. "The CIA's Wine Immersion laid the foundation for everything we've done with wine," says Steve. "Several of our instructors have become mentors, opening doors to industry insiders and the world of winemaking that we couldn't have imagined."

<< Back to Wine Immersion