Years of providing consulting and market research to Canadian financial services firms would be enough to dissuade many from risking a business start-up. Yet, two years ago, David and Cynthia Enns decided to blend their careers as founding partners of Vancouver-based Credo Consulting Inc. with their “overblown” love of wine-making and buy a vineyard in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley.

True to their roots in the financial services industry, the couple has announced plans to “go public” this month with an inaugural wine series, which includes a premium blended red, aptly named Portfolio 2003.

Cynthia says the couple’s two businesses are different, but go hand in hand. “The consulting industry is such an intellectual business, and the winery is so much more physical,” she says. “It’s a symbiotic relationship.”

It’s also the Enns’s attempt at a “serious enterprise with a light-hearted attitude,” as evidenced by the name they chose for their winery. Laughing Stock Vineyards is a cheeky nod to David’s humble beginnings in wine-making. A lover of wine for years, he started a makeshift winery in a friend’s garage in 2001 after he challenged a friend to join him in making the perfect batch of blended red. Game for a potential disaster, the pair contacted a winery in Washington and ordered a tonne of cabernet sauvignon grapes for the following September.

But when the shipment arrived, David was on his own. “My friend abandoned me and even my wife didn’t think I could pull it off,” he says. “Everyone thought I was crazy.”
He sank $10,000 into the project, all the while thinking: “If this wine doesn’t turn out fabulous, I’m going to be a laughing stock.”

Fortunately, his investment paid off and the name stuck. He made 50 cases of wine that season and another couple of barrels the following year. It was such a success that he and Cynthia, who shares his fondness for fine wines, began shopping for the ideal location for their own winery. They started their search in the better-known grape-growing regions of the world — the south of France, New Zealand and Oregon — before finally settling closer to their Penticton home in the Okanagan Valley, where the quality of the grapes and beautiful countryside won them over immediately.

They would have settled happily anywhere. Married for a decade, the couple has spent the past seven years running their financial services consulting business on a “virtual” basis, as they continue to live in B.C. despite a large client base on the other side of the country.

“In the investment industry, it doesn’t really matter where you are if you’re not in Toronto,” Cynthia says. “As long as you’re able to serve your clients, it’s no big deal.
We’ve been running our business on that philosophy, and we’ve managed to run the winery and Credo without any hiccups so far.”

As business consultants, the Enns understood the value of seeking expert opinions, and promptly hired a brand expert and a viticulturist to develop the product.

“You can’t pretend in any business, whether it is the investment business or the wine
business, that you know everything,” says Cynthia. “We were quite willing to turn to experts and say, ‘Tell us everything you know’.”

So far, their peers in the investment community are intrigued by their endeavor. David recalls delivering a presentation at a major investment house in downtown Toronto.
When he was finished, he pulled out a bottle of his wine and the roomful of executives had an impromptu taste test using corporate water glasses.

The wine is also winning fans on a larger scale. A hedge fund manager and a major Canadian bank have already signed up to use the wine for corporate gifts. Besides being produced by two people in the investment community, the wine has another appeal to industry types: each bottle is cleverly labelled with Laughing Stock’s mock ticker symbol, “LFNG,” along with the harvest date of grapes used to make the wine, written in ticker-tape style. The label also includes S&P stock prices for companies on the index that traded that day.

“The label tells the story of the wine and of us,” David says. “People collect these bottles and, over the years, they will become little time capsules of the markets.”

@page_break@That kind of marketing savvy was at least partially cultivated from their cumulative 35 years in the consulting industry. Both Cynthia and David remember the lesson they learned at a seminar given by a former employer entitled, “Standing out in a crowded marketplace.” Although the seminar was intended for a fund company, the couple have applied what they learned to the wine business.

“Whether you’re an advisor at a fund company or in the wine business, you really have to look at how you stand out in an overcrowded market,” says Cynthia.

The need to stand out is apparent with more than 100 competing wineries in B.C. alone. Fortunately, the winery gives them a creative outlet they never had in the investment industry. “At Laughing Stock, there’s more latitude in how we can market ourselves … it’s more creative,” Cynthia says.

Still, they’re not banking on creativity alone to make Laughing Stock financially viable. Their business plan projects the winery will break even within five or six years, and they remain focused on creating ultra-premium blended reds and blended whites — no ice wines, sparkling wines or rosés are in the plan. In the meantime, David sees their commitment to Laughing Stock as their “vow of poverty.”

“This is where lifestyle and passion kick in and sensibilities fall by the wayside,” he says.
“People who are interested in wine will spend an outrageous amount of money on a single bottle of wine because they’re intrigued. We’re the same way.”

To date, Laughing Stock wines are available in only a handful of wine stores and a few high-end restaurants in B.C., although the Enns plan to expand to Ontario eventually.

The wines have won accolades from local media, and Portfolio 2003 blend took a surprise bronze medal at the L.A. County Fair earlier this year. In keeping with their investment backgrounds, the Enns immediately issued a press release declaring the win a “dividend.” IE