Grapes, grain and persistence led these six UCLA alumni to success as they entered the field of brewers and vintners. Each one started their journey for different reasons: family, love, friendship, career or filling a humanitarian need. However, they are all linked by a common passion: the love for wine, beer and the Bruin entrepreneurial spirit.
Family
For Mike Wisnovsky’s ’91, winemaking was the continuation of a family legacy. He grew up on the Valley View Winery in Oregon, where his father had planted the original grapes in 1972. When Wisnovsky was about five years old, his father died suddenly in a construction accident which left the future of the winery, and the continuation of his father’s dream, uncertain among Wisnovsky and his three older siblings. Growing up, they did not view the winery as an advantage.
He went on to UCLA to study economics and run track, returning home every summer to work in the tasting rooms. “I remember a lot of people used to ask me what I was going to do. They said ‘Are you kidding me? You have to come back and run the winery!’” Wisnovsky said.
Wisnovsky replied, “I never left.”
He decided to manage the winery after graduating from UCLA and found meaning following his father’s footsteps.
Wisnovsky believes in the values of the winery; especially that it is family-owned and produces wine that is financially accessible to a wide-range of consumers.
“I enjoy that we have wine that’s $10, and that the people that work for us can afford that wine,” Wisnovsky said. “Wine is meant to be drunk, not to be art and put on the shelf for a long time.”
Love
UCLA gave Tom Stolpman ’72 a taste for business, as well as a taste for wine. However, it was his wife Marilyn Stolpman ’72, J.D. ’76 that saw Stolpman Vineyards as an opportunity to make an investment they could both enjoy.
It started with Wednesday night rituals in his West LA apartment. Stolpman said friends would come over to watch television; the guys brought beer, and the girls brought wine.
“Wine is all about food and good camaraderie,” Tom Stolpman said.
At the same time, Stolpman’s wife Marilyn was just returning from studying abroad in Bordeaux, France where she was exposed to different types of French wine. Marilyn and Tom met at a bridal party and wine became an important part of their nightly dinner together. They even took yearly trips to Napa.
After they married, they had a stroke of luck when a plot of land became available in the San Ynez Valley in 1990. This developed into Stolpman Vineyards and their custom home, Villa Angeli, where they spend their weekends. They’ve been expanding their wine production every year since. The Stolpmans have initiated their own family legacy, as their son, Peter, manages the winery now, making their investment a family project.
Friendship
Common Space Brewery founder Brent Knapp ’05 had no idea when he was studying anthropology as an undergraduate at UCLA that he would one day be a brewer. He worked in his family’s real estate business for seven years after graduation, and then pursued his MBA.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life,” Knapp said.
Knapp became an analyst specializing in food, beverage, and tobacco companies, and while spending his days reading about consumers, restaurants, and wine and spirit products he interest in the industry grew.
One night, after having a couple of beers with his former UCLA fraternity brother, Ryan Filippini, the idea for the brewery was born. Filippini worked for a manufacturer that sold brewing equipment, so by the end of the night he and Knapp decided to open a brewery.
In 2016, they rented a building in Hawthorne, Calif. next to the SpaceX building, and on March 1, 2018 they celebrated the grand opening of Common Space Brewery.
“Walking through the tap room at night and having a beer with someone who is just really excited that we’re here [makes me excited about the job],” Knapp said. “We’re a great place for people to come together and have some fun.”
Art
Gavin Chanin’s ’09 started his wine company while he was still an undergraduate at UCLA, although his UCLA career almost didn’t happen. Before the school year started, he decided to study art and attend UCLA instead of going to Washington, where he had already committed.
Chanin said, “I decided to switch [to UCLA] and follow my passion.”
What he wasn’t expecting was that his passion would include wine. The summer before his freshman year, Chanin began an internship at a winery in Santa Barbara. Initially, he was doing physical work, but eventually he worked his way up to assistant winemaker, managing all of the family’s white wines. The quarter system allowed him to let his academic schedule fit the harvest season in September, when wineries are the busiest: He took every fall quarter off and added summer school to compensate. Then Chanin started his wine company just before he resumed his junior year at UCLA in 2007.
Winemaking served as a platform to pursue his passion for wine and art. At Chanin Wine Company, one of Gavin Chanin’s paintings is displayed on the label of each bottle of wine. Similar to wine, he said his featured paintings develop over time.
“The philosophy hasn’t changed, but hopefully we get a little better every year,”
Science
Kenneth Givich ’73 looked at winemaking as a continuation of his scientific passions. Givich studied microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics at UCLA, and worked as a medical microbiologist. He is now the head microbiologist for a family-owned chocolate company in the Bay Area.
“All of the fundamentals of scientific investigation were what I was taught at UCLA,” Givich said.
In the early 90s, Givich began pursuing winemaking as a side hobby. Both sets of his grandparents grew up making wine, one in Spain and the other Croatia. He bought a 30 gallon barrel and began making wine that he eventually drank at dinner or with his family. However, it was an expensive hobby.
“I decided I had to go professional or go broke,” Givich said. So he sold his condo and put all of his money into establishing Givich Vineyards. In 2000 he founded a custom-crush facility in Napa.
Despite producing up to 600 cases of wine a year, the winery was not self-sufficient. Givich continues to work as a microbiologist, but still enjoys pursuing his passion as a vintner. He brings his knowledge of microbiology to the winemaking process in order to make the best product for consumers. For example, he said many people who have reactions to red wine are actually reacting to the sulfites. He produces red wine with an antioxidant agent in lesser amounts to prevent reactions.
Givich said, “We are a part of the food safety change. We are making sure things are delicious and safe.”
Altruism
Brewing can sometimes lead to new passions. In this case, two Bruins use their craft for beer to pursue sustainable food production.
Dan Kurzrock ’12 used to make beer in his fraternity house at UCLA, a skill he learned from his freshman-year roommate’s brother. But as he continued to get more advanced in his brewing, he realized he was also increasingly throwing away nutritious, usable grain.
“We were making a batch of beer but we were also making a batch of food,” Kurzrock said.
The spent grain, or the byproduct that is left over after the brewing process, looked like oatmeal but smelled like bread, Kurzrock said. He added at the time, composting was not available at UCLA, so he and his friend Jordan Schwartz ‘12 began doing research on possible uses for the grain.
Kurzrock and Schwartz founded ReGrained, a San Francisco startup that repurposes spent-grain into flour that can be used in granola bars and breads, among other products. What started as an entrepreneurial hobby after graduation has turned into a global business, for which Kurzrock and Schwartz are building the market.
“We identified that there was an opportunity to create a platform and close the loop between breweries and food production,” Kurzrock said.
Last month, they filed a patent for ReGrained, and were named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2018.
Kurzrock said he is not able to brew beer frequently anymore. Instead, he and Schwartz are focusing on expanding ReGrained on the global level, and incorporating and repurposing new food byproducts in an effort to increase sustainability.
In Honor of
These stories of Bruin brewers and vintners are in honor of Garen ’66 and Shari ’66 Staglin, the founders of Staglin Family Vineyard. On June 2, they will be awarded UCLA’s highest alumni honor - the 2018 Edward A. Dickson Alumni of the Year award - in recognition of their leadership and philanthropic support for the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge and mental health research.
If you have a story of a Bruin-owned brewery or winery, share it with us at connectfeedback@alumni.ucla.edu.