Winemaker

Adam Hand grew up in Carson City, Nevada and has spent much of his life enjoying all the Great Basin has to offer. He is a graduate of UNR with BS, MS and PhD degrees. After a successful career in the construction industry he is back at UNR professing by day and otherwise home in Reno following his passion, making wine with the help of family and friends.

Inspiration

I’m truly fortunate to have met incredibly nice, helpful, and inspirational people in the industry. It’s as if everyone wants to share what they know with an aspiring winemaker. Today I am blessed with several friends that have commercial wineries that have inspired me. In reflecting, many people I have met over the years had similar stories of having a day job, commonly in corporate America, a science or engineering education, and a passion to grow wine grapes and/or make wine that kept them engaged at home and eventually led them from their day jobs to commercial wineries. After visiting an engineer friend with an incredibly entrepreneurial spirit that was the founder and president of a successful startup company and a boutique winery owner, I decided to get serious about doing something commercially.  My story wasn’t a lot different than several people I had met in the industry. So a career move from a VP of Quality role reporting to the CEO of a publicly traded Fortune company, Top 100 Employer to a professor at my alma mater landing me home in Reno on a regular basis. I no longer had an excuse not to give it a go, so GBW was created. My parents who had introduced me to fine wine were thrilled and I was excited. It was a rocky start and about the time I questioned it I was visiting my ailing 84 year old father showing him pictures of the remodeling work I was doing. He was a contractor and proud. He looked at me, and began to cry as he said, “I hope I live to see you open the winery.” I have not looked back since and my business philosophy comes from him: Good Quality for Good People, then Cost. He always said, the customer comes first. He delivered good quality for people with similar values at a fair price, and had a thriving business simply on word of mouth communications and old fashioned handshakes. My mission is really no different.