Winemaker Michael McClendon knew nothing about wine when he interned at a winery 12 years ago. He was a science whiz at the University of Texas at Tyler, finishing his biology degree with a minor in chemistry and applying to medical schools. A referral from the biology department chair led to the internship at nearby Kiepersol Vineyard & Winery. It turned out to be a dream job.
“I started off doing a little bit of everything, checking the fruit, pH analysis and a lot of quality control. I was fascinated by the science underpinnings [of winemaking]: yeast metabolism, fermentation kinetics — all the stuff I’d seen theoretically. I thought it was neat that this was the stuff I went to school for, and there was a direct application for it. That’s what got me into this industry,” McClendon says.
Instead of pursuing medical school in 2009, McClendon asked if he could stay on at Kiepersol. “They created a position for me to work in the laboratory there,” McClendon says. At age 22, he was an enologist.
The career turn surprised his family. “Several people in my family had hoped I’d go to med school. They’d ask, ‘Are you drinking every day there?’ It took a while for my parents to know that this was a serious career with longevity. It was an unfamiliar industry to them, but over time they saw that it was legitimate,” McClendon says.
By 2012, McClendon was head winemaker at Kiepersol. He credits the winery’s founder, the late Pierre de Wet, with mentoring him and encouraging him to visit wineries in Chile. With some convincing, he got de Wet’s permission to work at a New Zealand wine lab analyzing samples from all over the country during the offseason. McClendon says the three-month stint was a “formative experience” that broadened his winemaking knowledge.
After Kiepersol won the Top Texas Winery award at the 2017 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’s International Wine Competition, McClendon launched Sage’s Vintage, a custom crush winery, with Wes Jensen, a Nacogdoches insurance agent who grew grapes. Their main goal is to help Texas wineries produce good quality wines.
Sage’s services range from sourcing grapes from all over Texas and full-service wine production to just sharing winemaking expertise and the facility. The business is a boon to new wineries lacking the experience and expensive machinery needed to launch a fine wine brand.
“We also provide bottling and extra [production] capacity for expansion of existing wineries,” McClendon says. In fact, Sage’s first client was an established winery with regional retail distribution. “Most of our clients have tasting rooms,” he says.
With the help of another partner ― who left the venture to pursue a construction career ― McClendon and Jensen converted an old dairy barn in Nacogdoches into a winemaking facility. At first, McClendon juggled winemaking at Kiepersol with the custom crush business. But by 2019, business had grown so much that he left Kiepersol to pursue the crush business full time.
McClendon says his pivot to custom crush was born out of “a desire to have a greater impact on the Texas wine industry.”
“There are so many people getting into it,” he says. “With the growth that the Texas wine industry was having, I saw this as a way to lift the quality of wines around us. It can help bring a better perception of Texas wine.” Currently, Texas is the fifth largest wine producing state in the country and boasts more than 400 wineries.
McClendon takes pride in Sage’s track record for producing wines that win medals at competitions — including the TexSom International Wine Awards.
“The wines our clients have entered in competitions have all medaled ― that’s 100%. And we had [produced] wines that were Reserve Class Champions” at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, McClendon says. “Our big focus is quality.”
As a successful winemaker who is Black, McClendon has been an inspiration to a few people of color entering the mostly white world of wine.
“My goal is not just to be a good Black winemaker. I want to be a good winemaker ― period. That mentality has fueled my success, and by default, it kicks down the door for others,” he says.
Since 2018, several Black women have come to Sage’s for winemaking production and advice, McClendon says. Sage’s helped Cheramie Wines, a Black woman-owned wine brand in North Texas, produce its first wine, which will be released soon. Sage’s also produces wines for Ole’ Orleans Wines, a Black woman-owned winery in New Orleans.
When a Black woman winemaker from Houston contacted McClendon about getting experience at Sage’s, he didn’t hesitate to say yes.
“We’re looking at bringing her on as intern when we get into red wine production,” McClendon says. He knows firsthand the value of a good internship. “For me, it was an aha moment — that there’s an entire industry that involves science, agriculture and business. It was a gateway to what is now my career.”
Tina Danze is a Dallas freelance writer.