People
Meet Josh Peeples of Elyse Winery and 2100 Hoffman Lane, a Winemaking Collective
November 16, 2022
Josh Peeples couldn't afford any employees when he was starting out in the wine business in the early 2000s, so he labored alone instead, doing "grunt work" in a winery in Napa Valley for up to 21 hours a day – typically from 3 a.m. until midnight – until a little light bulb finally went off in his head.
“That was one of the early epiphanies for me, working almost 24 hours straight, and realizing I kind of enjoyed it,” recalls Peeples. “It wasn’t, ‘I’m gonna go sleep for four hours,’ it was, ‘I’m excited to be back doing this tomorrow morning.’”
He no longer goes it alone. Now, as proprietor of Elyse Winery in Napa Valley and co-founder of 2100 Hoffman Lane, a winemaking collective, Peeples collaborates with some of the most inventive, highly-regarded winemakers working today to produce wines “that need to exist for the world.” He is not a one-person operation anymore.
In 2018, Peeples and his partner, Cheryl Foil, a venture capitalist, and technologist, acquired Elyse Winery from their neighbors, Ray and Nancy Coursen, founders of the Elyse brand, and brought legendary Napa winemaker, Russell Bevan, on as Winemaker for Elyse.
“Ray didn’t want anybody to buy the winery and then kill the brand and sell it for parts or allow the brand to just wither away,” says Peeples. “Elyse is Ray and Nancy’s legacy. It’s named after their daughter. So we always keep that in mind.”
Peeples and Foil also established a winemaking collective, 2100 Hoffman Lane, at Elyse Winery in 2018. The five small-lot wine producers who comprise 2100 Hoffman Lane – the majority are wine brands in Peeples’s portfolio – operate out of Elyse’s winemaking facility, sharing equipment and space to produce around 9,000 cases of wine a year.
Sommsation has partnered with three wine brands from the 2100 Hoffman Lane family: Addax, Elyse, and Standard Deviation.
“Josh works with the best in the industry. The wines that his team is crafting are powerful yet refined, with interesting stories behind every label,” says Lauren Magee, Chief Product Officer for Sommsation. “His portfolio offers a lineup of wines that wine lovers – from the curious to the collector – are eager to discover and enjoy, but might not have known how to access until now. Through our collaboration with 2100 Hoffman Lane, Sommsation makes it easy for vintners and winemakers like Josh to share their passion, and wines, with customers beyond the tasting room. "
Born and raised on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, Peeples moved to San Francisco in 1998 and co-founded a start-up focusing on order management software for the beverage industry. “The dot-com boom had just kind of started, so you know, good timing,” says Peeples.
Excursions to Napa Valley sparked an interest in wine and Peeples soon progressed from dabbling in wine to learning the craft of winemaking in earnest from local vintners and winemakers. By 2002, he was making wine in Napa Valley full-time.
He finds the “ever-evolving” nature of the wine business “invigorating.” Winemakers have to adapt to a roller coaster of weather conditions to stay afloat and Peeples embraces a “make-it-up-as-you-go mentality” – a carryover from his start-up days – when necessary.
“The wine business is super unpredictable,” observes Peeples. “When Mother Nature is your business partner, you really have to be nimble.”
There’s a saying at Elyse Winery that Peeples coined: “Whether it’s in sales or production, I can teach you anything but I can’t teach you the passion” [for winemaking]. Put simply, it’s not enough to have the “wine bug;” if you want to work with Peeples, you have to “be in love with the product” full-stop.
His partner-in-wine since 2010, Russell Bevan, has “the passion” – times a million.
A self-taught winemaker and former syndicated wine columnist, the sought-after Bevan has produced more than 15 wines that have earned perfect 100-point ratings. Bevan is winemaker for Addax and Elyse. He also directs winemaking at Institution Winery, another wine label in Peeples’s portfolio.
“Russell is one of the most celebrated winemakers on the planet,” says Peeples. “I think my job is really just to give him more colors to paint with and kind of find out what gets him excited.”
The “hyper-competitive” Bevan is “driven to make great wine,” says Peeples.
“We had a client in front of our whole staff that I've known for years, congratulate me on one of our 98-Point wines, and Russell's response was, ‘Well, no one's gotten fired yet,’” recalls Peeples. “Because the expectation is perfect. And that’s fine. That's kind of where we get 100 points, right?”
(Just to be clear, Bevans and Peeples are setting a stratospherically high bar for themselves here. For context, a wine rated 95 points or higher, out of 100, is “Classic: a great wine” according to Wine Spectator’s scoring system).
For Peeples, the wine business is 12 hours a day, seven days a week. He and his English Labrador Retriever, Beaux, often arrive at Elyse Winery as early as 6:30 a.m., ready to go, relishing the day ahead.
“Sometimes it’s glamorous, other times it’s, ‘Okay, we’re going to clean the gutters now,’” says Peeples. “But, really, most of the time it doesn’t feel like work. I just love what I do.”
Discover more about Elyse Winery and their wines.
