The Wines To Open When Your Business Hits A Milestone
Sommelier-approved bottles to celebrate launches, revenue wins, first hires, and major moments in your business.
The “negativity bias” holds that humans tend to devote more mental energy to failures and shortcomings than to positive events and successes. Women entrepreneurs are not an exception. Women are also skilled at excelling, accomplishing, and then asking, “What’s next?” The launch happens, and instead of celebrating, it’s immediately onto the next big milestone. The first big revenue month arrives, and the focus shifts to how to replicate that win.
Celebration deserves a moment. It is neither frivolous nor optional. Marking milestones creates muscle memory, reinforces momentum, and gives entrepreneurs a rare opportunity to recognize how far they’ve actually come.
Wine has many parallels to this idea. From the planting of a grapevine, fruit is usually not harvested for two to four years. Then the wine needs to be made and aged. And once bottled, the wine may require time in bottle before it can be sold. There is no instant gratification with wine. Like a business, it takes time and patience to build. The right bottle can turn a “checkbox” business moment into a lasting, tangible success worth savoring.
Here are our sommelier-approved bottles to celebrate some key milestones in your business.
Celebrate Your First Hire
2024 Wente Clone Chardonnay, $50 (Livermore, CA)
Hiring someone for the first time is about trust and letting go. It marks the moment a founder realizes they can no longer carry everything alone. Chardonnay works beautifully here because Chardonnay is a grape that works well on its own and also plays well with others. Chardonnay can balance richness with restraint. Wente, a 5th-generation female-led grower in the Livermore Valley, feels grounded, dependable, and confident, much like the foundation you hope to build with a new team member. Mindset takeaway: Delegation is not losing control. It is creating capacity and the ability to be worth more than the sum of its parts.
Celebrate Your First Major Press Feature
Donnafugata Mille e una Notte 2021, $112 (Sicily, Italy)
An Old World red with story and drama from the 5th generation of the Rallo family, now led by matriarch, José Rallo. A major press hit changes how others see your business, but it also changes how you see yourself. This moment deserves a wine with narrative and personality. Donnafugata’s cinematic collaboration, tied to Netflix’s The Leopard (a Sicilian novel), gives the bottle built-in storytelling appeal, while the wine itself is sophisticated without trying too hard.
Mindset takeaway: Visibility is not vanity. It is a business tool.
Celebrate Your First Product Launch
Champagne Taittinger Brut La Française, $55 (Champagne, France)
A first launch is equal parts adrenaline and vulnerability. You are finally letting people see the thing you built, which deserves a celebratory moment. Champagne captures that nervous excitement better than almost any other category. Taittinger, with its elegance and freshness, feels polished, yet approachable.
Mindset takeaway: A launch does not need to be perfect to be worth celebrating.
Celebrate Your First Six-Figure Month
DAOU Soul of a Lion 2023, $150 (Paso Robles, CA)
A six-figure month reflects vision, endurance, and the ability to execute under pressure. Soul of a Lion has the structure and intensity of a powerful Cabernet, delivering an ambitious, layered wine. The flagship Soul of a Lion cuvée, from brothers Daniel and Georges Daou, who went from refugees to self-made millionaires before establishing their Daou winery in California's Paso Robles, matches this milestone moment.
Mindset takeaway: Revenue wins are not luck when you’ve built the systems to support it.
Founders are trained to focus on the next target. But sometimes the smartest thing you can do for your business is pause long enough to acknowledge the win and savor a great bottle of wine to celebrate.
