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What does it take to craft a perfect wine?

Is it the measuring, testing, fermenting and filtering? Or, is it the refined palate that finds hints of oak and spice, the ability to sense a subtle fragrance?

For Sharon Fenchak MBA ’16, Ģ������Ƶ alumna and executive winemaker at Biltmore Wines, it’s the dance between science and art that makes a great glass of merlot, cabernet or chardonnay.

“Winemaking is science, but it’s also art,” Fenchak said. “The science is important – it comes into play when you are going through the process of testing, clarification, bottling – but when you get to the end with the blending and fine-tuning, that’s when the artistic part of it comes in. You’re making final decisions to soften the wine, to add body, flavor or spice. That’s the fun part.”

Fenchak found her love for food science at a young age. As a child, she was influenced by her grandmothers, who were closely connected to the land and enjoyed feeding family and friends from their gardens. Fenchak was fascinated by the bubbles in a glass of wine and the steam evaporating from a pot of stew. She saw the chemistry in it all.

“My love of science at a very young age helped shape what would become my passion for winemaking. I learned that the best kind of experiments were the ones you could eat or drink,” she said.

By studying food science at Penn State University and the University of Georgia, she refined her interests into a career path.

With a deepening interest in the science of winemaking, she worked as an assistant winemaker at Habersham Winery in Baldwin, Georgia, and soon became winemaker at a small winery in Braselton, Georgia, where she oversaw the wine development process.

Fenchak joined the Biltmore Wines team in 1999, and in 2018 she became Biltmore’s vice president of winemaking and the vineyard, which includes oversight of the estate’s vineyards and partnerships with growers in other parts of America. She had become an expert in the science and art of winemaking, but in order to rise to vice president, she needed to better understand the business components. That’s why she enrolled in WCU’s master’s in business administration in 2013, offered at the Biltmore Park instructional site in Asheville.

“A winery is a business and there’s a lot of decisions based around costs of goods, supply chain. You’re receiving fruit and looking at pricing. You need to order bottle caps, corks and labels. There’s the need to understanding marketing,” Fenchak said. “In any supervisory role, too, you need to understand leadership, how to manage teams, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to attend Ģ������Ƶto obtain my MBA.” 

Fenchak said that classes at Ģ������Ƶopened her eyes to aspects of her job she hadn’t considered before.

“Scientists and business managers think way differently. I had been out of school since 1999, so I had to turn my brain on in a different way, which was great,” she said. “I had to think not only about the wine itself, the creative aspect and the science of it, but also about cost and production – if something tastes great but it’s way over the cost of what we’re selling the bottle for, it doesn’t make sense.”

Whether winemaking and running a winery is a science, an art, or a business, one thing that remains true for Fenchak is that the end product is for people. It’s personal.

“When I’m making a wine, I think about who I would want to share it with,” she said. “I think about the food pairing we might sit and eat together. I’m making this wine for that person, for that meal. Sometimes, too, you have to work to find a wine a person likes. Everyone has different tastes and preferences. But we can have 40 different wines, so usually we can find something for everyone.”