Vino, Vidi, Vici Iowa native Chris Christensen charts his own course, conquering the wine world one bottle at a time. BY TIFFANI GREEN
“I
’m the fish that likes to swim upstream.” Chris Christensen used this phrase over and over again to describe his journey from a middle-class upbringing in Iowa to attending Stanford University to starting his own winery in Sonoma County. Christensen’s unlikely breakthrough into the wine business is underscored by his identification with and affinity for underdogs and people who exceed expectations. His winery’s very name, Bodkin, is a reference to the arrowheads used by the English peasant archers who faced down aristocratic French soldiers at the battle of Agincourt. And won. Not unlike those archers at Agincourt, Christensen’s story is one of exceeding expectations. It is relatable, remarkable and features serendipitous coincidences and a few adventures. Christensen grew up in Cedar Rapids, the third generation of his family to live there, and is fiercely proud of his Iowa roots. “I identify as an Iowan before anything else,” he tells me. He was raised by a family of educators who, interestingly enough, never drank, and impressed upon him the importance of excelling academically from an early age. He attended Cedar Rapids Washington High at a time when Iowa was nationally recognized for its educational system. An English teacher introduced him to Shakespeare, and Christensen fell in love with the play Henry V, about the English king who fought the French at Agincourt. He credits all of this for setting him on the path to starting Bodkin Wines. “I always knew I would go to college, it was just expected,” he said. “And I knew I wanted to go to an Ivy League school somewhere where it didn’t snow.” Christensen graduated from high school as a valedictorian and realized his goal when he 70
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“I was in an industry where my degree from Stanford didn’t mean anything and where it was hard to move up. If I wanted to progress, I had to start my own label.” was admitted to Stanford University for college. He had initially planned to study engineering but felt out of his depth at Stanford. “I had been one of the smartest people in the room in high school, but now I was in the company of people who were so brilliant their governments were sponsoring their education. I wasn’t prepared.” He settled on a communications science degree, and graduated in 2003. Unsure what he wanted to do next, he thought he’d try out the wine business, which was ubiquitous in California. He’d met Ernest Gallo III, a Stanford alum, at a university event and mentioned his interest. This led to an eight-month internship in the lab at the E. & J. Gallo winery, where Christensen discovered that he was deeply interested in the chemistry of winemaking. By the time the internship ended, Christensen knew he wanted to pursue a career in the wine industry. He went on to work
at several wineries performing more hands-on work—mopping floors, filling barrels—so he could learn the business inside and out. Career paths often have detours and Christensen’s is no exception. For a year during the Great Recession, he thought he’d try a more stable, traditional route and worked at Wachovia Bank. “I hated it. We were repossessing people’s cars at the height of the recession and I wanted nothing to do with it.” He turned down a job transfer that would have taken him to South Carolina and went back into the wine industry, accepting a job at Medlock Ames in Healdsburg, California. In 2011, Christensen grabbed an opportunity that proved to be a turning point in his transition from working at wineries to building his own. He was invited by winemaker Brian Keyes to participate in a grape harvest at his namesake vineyard in Adelaide, Australia. That harvest turned into a year spent working in Australia, and the money he earned there, boosted by a favorable exchange rate, became
