A liberal arts education can make a career transition easier. Or it may provide the necessary bravado to make an employer think a liberal arts guy can handle any job.
Tony Lentych ’89 is somewhere in between.
Lentych, a South Bend native, worked in Wabash admissions, Indianapolis public housing, and economic development at Lansing, MI before finding a truly satisfying career that was a big change from his past.
A Michigan friend’s family owned and operated a winery in north-ern Michigan. The friend sent Tony some photos of an old building the family was about to convert to a tasting room on the Leelanau Peninsula, a region recognized this year by Wine Enthusiast Magazine as one of the Top 10 emerging wine destinations.
“I don’t know what this [building] is but you should hire me to run it,” Tony recalls telling the friend. “Well, he said ‘That’s my new tasting room and I really don’t need a tasting room manager, but I am looking for a general manager. Are you interested?’
“And I said, ‘Sure.’ It’s my liberal arts thing. If somebody asks you if you can run a winery, just say yes. Then, see what happens.”
Tony laughs as he tells the story. He was tired of the world of public policy and politics and wanted a change. His Indiana University master’s degree from the School of Philanthropy was about to pay off. He used many of the business lessons he learned at IU to set up good business practices at Leelanau Cellars, in Omena.
He has presided over explosive growth at one of Michigan’s biggest wine producers. The winery went from 30,000 cases a year to about 50,000 cases at the time Tony took the job. They doubled that production to 114,000 cases last year. Tony doesn’t reveal the winery’s long-term goal but isn’t shy about making it clear that the winery wants to get bigger and continue to be a leader in the emerging Michigan wine industry.
“I often tell people I had the best liberal arts education in classics and theater. I had philosophy classes, art, architecture, language, history—a lot of different areas. That’s what it’s like running a business. Every day you do a couple of things, some human resources stuff, put out some fires, do strategic planning, quick turnaround implementation, and keep your people happy.”
Tony helped guide the winery into wider distribution mainly in Michigan, but also throughout the Midwest. Michigan wine is being recognized by industry leaders as a new major player in cool-weather wines, especially Riesling.
The affable Lentych laughs about his success and turns the question about goals to a meeting he had with employees one morning when the late Dick Ristine ’41 happened to be visiting the winery.
“So we’re standing around, just talking—a lot of time I’ll ask a strategic question,” Tony explains. “I asked, ‘What’s the most important thing we do here?’ I got all sorts of answers and no one got it. So I was telling this story and right there sat Dick Ristine and he said ‘Sell wine.’ And that was it, exactly—sell wine!”
Lentych has brought a commitment to customer service, price point, and improved quality to Leelanau Cellars. And as the winery looks to double production again from the more than 100,000 cases sold last year, there’s no bravado necessary to sell more wine.
—Howard Hewitt
