Chris Dukelow has seen a “unicorn.” As for the former CFO at Auth0, he was there for two years of massive growth and funding that catapulted the Seattle startup to its vaunted $1 billion valuation.
Now Dukelow is chasing after another elusive creature of sorts, from the wine country of the Walla Walla Valley where he is challenging tradition and offering up his sustainable answer to the excessive nature of wine packaging. Dukelow is ditching bottles.
Dukelow announced the launch Thursday of Irreverent Wine, a monthly wine subscription service that promotes sustainable wine making and delivers it in a recyclable pouch that promises less waste and longer shelf life for quality wines.
“I believe the wine bottle as a vessel for wine is a broken model,” Dukelow said. “There’s a better way. There’s no reason why you can’t put wine in a can, a box, a pouch. The problem is that historically everyone’s put crap wine in those containers.”
While wine preference may be subjective, there’s no arguing that the business relies on a lot of bottles. Dukelow says over 4 billion wine bottles are consumed annually in the U.S. alone, with 70 percent of those ending up in landfills. The manufacturing and transport of the bottles emits approximately 10 billion pounds of CO2-equivalent emissions.
Irreverent’s pouch, made by such manufacturers as AstraPouch, is a free-standing plastic vessel with more rigidity than the bags that come inside boxed wines.
“It’s something that you can just stick on the shelf in the refrigerator, on the counter, in the cooler. It’s got handles for carrying,” Dukelow said. “It really is the ideal thing for camping, boating, going on a picnic, hiking. And once you open it it’s not exposed to oxygen so it lasts up to four weeks.”
Dukelow grew up in the heart of Washington wine country in the Tri-Cities before heading off to the University of Washington to pursue a degree in business accounting. He would return home to visit his parents and go on wine tastings, and he grew to appreciate the romanticism of a small winery out in the country.
He served as CFO at a number of startups and venture-backed companies, and after one company he was working for was acquired, he used his severance to go back to school and learn how to make wine. And after two years at Auth0, he left tech for good.
“I’m not a big company person, I’m a startup person,” Dukelow said. “They really needed someone that was going to get them ready for going public and that was not something I wanted to do. So I ended up extracting myself and coming to Walla Walla and doing the wine thing.”
Duklelow’s wife, Toby Turlay, also eventually made the leap and enrolled in the Walla Walla Institute of Enology and Viticulture. Together they have been making wine under the name Ducleaux Cellars from a 10-acre plot of land in Milton-Freewater, Ore.
The name Irreverent is meant to play off “wine snobbery” and how it puts a lot of people off — and how Dukelow aims to make a little light of all that.
They’ll try to attract members by offering a variety of wines from independent Washington and Oregon vineyards committed to eco-friendly practices. And the wine will come in pouches that hold much more liquid than traditional bottles. Prices range from between $39-$49 monthly for 1.5-liter subscriptions (two bottle equivalent) and $49-$59 for 3-liter subscriptions (four bottle equivalent).
Members never get the same wine twice, but have the flexibility to customize recurring shipments, including pouch size. And Dukelow said artificial intelligence technology will be employed to learn customer preferences and tailor orders accordingly.
Recognizing that he’s up against longstanding traditions in the wine industry and expectations for how good wine is packaged, Dukelow is banking on a younger generation open to alternatives, and a market ripe for change.
“I’ve worked with some amazing people in the venture world and the one thing that the successful ones had was passion and grit,” he said. “So I think that’s something that I bring to the table. It won’t always be easy and you have to persevere and you also have to listen to customers and adapt to what they’re telling you.”
