Working alongside Dad can be a challenge, but these residents say it has offered a chance to build family ties and do good work

By Raven J. Railey

Working with dad isn’t for everybody. But when the combination is right, it can make for a long-lasting, unbeatable team, according to the following fathers who work with their kids. In honor of Father’s Day, The Tribune interviewed four dads, their sons and daughters to understand the joys and challenges of operating a business together.

Ron Denner

When Denner Vineyards released its new wines this year, Ron Denner was far more nervous than in previous years. He couldn’t be objective about their quality because they were crafted by his 32-year-old son, Brian Denner.

"There’s always nervousness on a father’s part — whether they’re 10 years old or 20 or 32," said Ron, who owns the winery with his wife, Marilyn. "You think they’re wonderful, but the public doesn’t care if they’re your son or not."

Fortunately, the wines are well received. Its club membership is maxed out at 500, with 50 people on a waiting list. The family is expanding production, which was about 1,000 cases this year, to about 3,000 next year.

Father and son developed a passion for wine around the same time, but from different directions. Ron and Marilyn were in Colorado running Ditch Witch dealerships in several states and Brian was a "ski bum" for a year after earning a degree in anthropology, when Ron Denner decided in 1997 to buy land in Paso Robles to plant a vineyard.

While the parents built Denner Vineyards with hired winemakers, Brian worked as a "cellar rat" elsewhere in Paso, studied winemaking at Fresno State University, and then took jobs at wineries in Sonoma and Chile. He returned to Paso in 2004, when his parents offered him the winemaking job.

"He’s an independent-minded young guy," his father said of Brian’s career decisions. "He never asked, ‘What do you think of this or that.’ Being able to recruit Brian to do this with us, I have a lot of fatherly pride."

Brian said it was important to him to bring the right knowledge and qualifications to contribute to the business.

"I didn’t want to just inherit something that I didn’t help build," he said. While he’s the expert on grapes and winemaking, his father is the marketing and sales guru. "We both bring something necessary to the table, but from different sides of the table. He doesn’t like the chemistry and wine geeky side of it, which is my forte."

Understanding their different strengths and having their own spheres within the business reduces the potential for conflict, they say.

"That’s how a team works," Ron said. "Put the father- patriarch business in the closet and leave it there."