Oklahoma Executive Q&A with Michelle Finch: Vacation leads to Girls Gone Wine

BY JENNIFER PALMER Comments 0
Published: November 1, 2009
Modified: November 2, 2009 at 12:42 pm

Michelle Finch took a life-changing road trip a few years ago with two girlfriends, in a convertible, visiting wineries, drinking wine along the way and having fun.

Owner/CEO Michelle Finch of Girls Gone Wine is seen in this picture. Photo by Doug Hoke.

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Personally speaking

Michelle Finch

→Position: Co-founder and co-owner of Girls Gone Wine in Broken Bow.

→Age: 46.

→Education: Bachelor’s in math and computer science from East Central University in Ada.

→Family: Husband, Terry Walker (the company’s winemaker); stepchildren Terra and David; two dogs and two cats.

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She had no idea that vacation would bring the women together in a business venture, opening their own winery and each owning 33 1/3 as equal partners.

But it did and Finch is now co-owner of Girls Gone Wine, a wildly popular winery in Broken Bow. The business started with a "what if...,” she said.

"We envisioned having a pink leather sofa and a TV where we would watch chick flicks and Sex and the City and just drink our wine and hope we had a customer or two — never dreaming that it would actually work,” Finch said.

It’s not a bad gig, considering the business meetings conducted over bottles of wine and business trips to wineries in Italy, California, Dallas and upstate New York.

When they started Girls Gone Wine, the women intended it to be a side business to fund their "travel habit,” Finch said. She and the other women, Chandra Rickey and Rhonda Reed, had other careers: Finch as the director of the Forest Heritage Center Museum in Beavers Bend State Park — a job she has since resigned to concentrate on the winery.

She continues to work part-time for the Oklahoma Forestry Services and makes time for other varied interests, and of course — wine.

Finch recently sat down with The Oklahoman to talk about her professional and personal life. The following is an edited transcript.

Q: Would you tell me about your childhood in Broken Bow?

A: My dad was the first manager on Broken Bow Lake. It was built by the (U.S. Army) Corps of Engineers. In the late ’60s they finished the dam and flooded the lake and we moved there in ’71.

Q: As part of your job at the Oklahoma Forestry Services, you’re a public information officer for an incident management team — spending weeks during the summer at wildfires. What’s that like?

A: It’s really been a life-changing experience. Everybody always says, ‘oh, you’re a firefighter.’ No, but I do take my tent and my sleeping bag and wear fire clothes and sleep on the ground. You go to an unknown place and rent a car and drive out, usually on the side of a mountain, and there’s a whole little city set up to deal with the fire and you quickly immerse yourself in the community learning who’s who.

Q: How did you, Chandra and Rhonda meet?

A: Rhonda and I have known each other all our lives; Broken Bow is a small town. Chandra moved into town in 1996 and we both have been the Chamber of Commerce president and we’re very involved in the community, so we were crossing paths a lot and became friends. Chandra was the glue that got us all together, but how the three of us ended up on that trip, I don’t remember. Our love of travel and shopping end up with ‘Hey! We maybe should just DO this winery thing.’

Q: How do the three of you manage to run the company together?

A: We try to meet weekly and any decisions that might affect spending or major changes, we figure it all out. I think three is the perfect number because we come to a consensus quickly. There’s never two against two. It just seems to be the right mix. We all bring different skills to the table.

And it’s just fun. We have people that come in and see all that fun and say they want to do it and want to do a similar business or even a franchise, but the part they miss is the tremendous amount of work that goes in to the production end. Selling it (wine) is the fun and easy part. It does seem glamorous — doing tastings with a bar full of people, with people waiting on any given Saturday. It is fun and people say ‘how can we do this?’ The first thing you’ve got to have is a Terry (her husband), the wine stud. He’s really the backbone.

Q: Can you recall your first glass of wine?

A: I was a beer drinker and I came into this business preferring beer. I remember that first glass of wine like a lot of people: someone serves you that glass and says ‘This is just excellent wine,’ which usually means it’s dry, it’s expensive, and to a novice it’s bitter and not so good. And that’s kind of what I remember — my (older) sister just being appalled that I didn’t enjoy the wines she would serve me.

Q: What is your favorite wine now?

A: I love our Chardonnay. I love a chilled white wine, typically. But I drink it all.