Perfect Pairing: Prelude Wines Is a Family Affair for the Gandees
Written by Doug Goodnough
When it comes to wine, Charles, ’07, and Megan Mahan Gandee, ’09, make a perfect pairing.
The couple, along with Megan’s sister Erin, ’05, and brother-in-law Nick Hasulak, have joined forces to start Prelude Wines, based in northern Virginia. Each has a role in the business, which had its origins more than a decade ago when Charles and Nick dabbled in winemaking from a California garage.
After the Gandees moved to Lorton, Virginia—where Charles was born and raised—they leased several rows in a vineyard about an hour’s drive west of Lorton to grow their first batch of grapes. The first fruits of their labor were bottled, and now Prelude is ramping up to sell about 2,500 bottles of wine.
“This is the first time during this venture that we’ve had a lot to sell,” said Megan, who handles the marketing side of the business along with raising their three young children.
Charles, who was a finance major at Hillsdale, is the “boots on the ground” person who has spent more than a decade learning the craft of winemaking. In fact, he apprenticed with other producers, learning the growing, harvesting, tasting, and production processes.
“If you ever say that you will do physical labor, nobody tells you no,” said Charles of his work at other wineries. “We started working at tasting rooms, in cellars, at sorting tables, and helping with harvests.”
Erin and Nick, who reside in Arizona but remain active in the business, also spent several weeks completing apprenticeships in Argentina. The Hasulaks and Gandees took classes to earn Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) certification. According to its website, WSET is an awarding body and registered charity devoted to the development and delivery of qualifications and courses in wines and spirits. Nick, Erin, and Megan are WSET Level 2 certified, with Charles recently completing Level 3.
“I’ve worked my way up through WSET 3, which is roughly equivalent to a ‘major’ in wine,” Charles said. “You have to do blind tasting. You get graded. All of your test scores get sent to England to get graded. It’s a process.”
And to be successful in the wine industry, you must have a great palette.
“We both developed our palettes a lot over time, and you can train it just like going to the gym,” said Megan, who majored in marketing at Hillsdale. “Yes, we’ll get out of practice occasionally, and we’ll have to get back into it.”
During the end of the growing season, Charles is basically “on call” as he awaits word that the grapes are ready to be harvested. And sometimes he needs to respond on a moment’s notice, one year even cancelling a rock-climbing trip with his friends and driving 4½ hours back to the vineyard to make sure the grapes were picked at the right time.
When it comes to wine, California is still the nation’s top wine producer; however, Virginia is steadily climbing the production ladder as one of the top ten or so wine-producing states in the country.
“I think that Virginia is on its way, maybe five to ten years out, of becoming a pretty serious contender in the wine world,” Charles said. “What we love about Virginia is it’s not quite Old World; it’s not quite New World. It’s not going to be as fruit forward as a California or Oregon wine because the climate’s not for that. But it also has these more austere qualities you are going to get in the Old World. I think it’s super underrated. And I think that’s what excites us so much. We love what’s being produced here.”
While Prelude has a supply of both red and white wines, the Gandees are excited about a variety of grape called Petit Manseng. The small white grape with a high sugar level that maintains its acidity is not well known, and usually grows best in the south of France. However, Charles said the variety grows extremely well in Virginia, and he thinks it could be an emerging force in the wine world. The Gandees hope Prelude Wines will be leading the way. Prelude carries a 2023 Petit Manseng, which is a dry varietal, often aged in oak barrels.
“I think that in ten years, Virginia will be known [for Petit Manseng],” Charles said. “Petit Manseng is still in very small production in Virginia, but it’s certainly ramping up. And I think I’ve never had a better expression of Petit Manseng anywhere in the world that I have had in Virginia. It does really well dry or sweet.”
And time is on the Gandees’ side. Charles currently has a full-time job as the chief executive officer for the family business, which is a ServiceMaster franchise in the area, while Megan works on a contract basis for event planning. Prelude Wines is not their full-time job, just a full-time passion.
“A lot of people are trying to make a bottom line,” Charles said of others in the winemaking industry. “Because we have full-time jobs, we can kind of experiment with the [business].”
The Gandees’ ultimate vision for the business is to one day purchase their own land and open a winery. They are targeting western Virginia, where the climate and the topography make for optimal wine production. That will take years—maybe more than a decade—to come to fruition, but they are comfortable playing the long game.
“We want to have a full tasting room and a vineyard, a place where people can come and where serious wine drinkers would enjoy wine,” Charles said.
For now, the Gandees said they are enjoying pursuing their passion and raising their children, who hopefully will one day join the family business.
“It’s been a lot of online pitching and intimate parties at our house,” Megan said of the process of selling their wine. “It’s been mostly with family, friends, and friends of friends, which is exactly what we expected without a marketing budget. It’s working.”
To learn more about Prelude Wines, visit www.prelude.wine.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.
Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.
Published in October 2024