NexTerra Wine Company is an IL based, 1M+ case, wine producer with a core belief that vendor and employee partnerships are critical to the continued success of the company and as such, require frequent nurturing in order to promote excellence in communication and symbiotic growth. Headquartered 30 minutes west of Chicago, the 185,000-square-foot facility houses a fermentation winery, 2 state-of-the art bottling lines and case goods warehouse. Partnering with distinguished winery partners across the globe, partners with key winery partners to nurture each wine along its individual path — a philosophy that has resulted in over 600 national and international wine awards. With deep industry knowledge, boundless creativity, and modern winemaking techniques, NexTerra is a top-20 U.S. producer.

NexTerra is seeking a Domestic Wine Sourcing Senior Associate that will support the continued management and growth of our vendor relationships. This role will focus on managing and identifying sources of wine, negotiating, and executing contracts and spot purchases, manage existing and building new supplier relationships, ensuring wine quality and health are superior, and support product development and innovation as needed. The position will require domestic travel.

Primary responsibilities include but are not limited to:
•  Oversee and manage domestic vendor relationships and contracts.
•  Supports negotiations, review, and execution of annual pre-harvest, long and SPOT contracts., in partnership with Global Sourcing Manager.
•  Manage vintage approval process between wineries and winemaking ensuring all signoffs occur in a timely manner.
•  Conduct regular visits to winery partners, assessing wine quality and discussing ongoing projects and issues.
•  Ensure vendor winemaking contacts understand and follow standard operating procedures; mentoring, coaching, and correcting as necessary.
•  Function as a liaison between internal NexTerra winemaking and external winery partners to monitor wine quality, stylistic direction, improve communication and to further
develop existing business relationships.
•  Coordinate sample requests, documenting expected samples for our internal team, supporting internal logistics team with required information.
•  Support processing of new contracts using Docusign, enter Purchase Orders into Vintegrate, and communicate new purchases with internal accounting and logistics teams,
as needed.
•  Maintain and update contact matrix of all current, past, and potential winery and vineyard contacts, bulk wine sellers, grape growers, and custom crush facilities to keep a
constant network of quality bulk availabilities.
•  Travels to domestic trade shows, identifies and builds network of wine partners.
•  Travels to winery partners located within the U.S. (majority on west coast).

Preferred Qualifications and Requirements:
•  Prior role with a large winery and/or with custom crush, control, or private label
•  Bachelor's degree in Viticulture, Ag Business, Enology, Winemaking
•  Strong wine sensory palate for wine assessment and development
•  Experience working with winemakers.
•  Vineyard/grower relations, winemaking, vendor relations role experience reflecting increasing levels of responsibility and travel budgeting and a general understanding of
bulk wine trade.
•  Skilled in the use of MS Excel, MS PowerPoint at a basic level; MS Word and MS Outlook at an intermediate level.
•  Skilled in defining problems, collecting data, establishing facts, and drawing valid conclusions.
•  Experience auditing winemaking and cellar records.
•  Experience in and a detailed understanding of winery headspace management and sanitation.
•  Experience performing work that is varied, requires constant reprioritization, multitasking, frequent re-evaluation, originality, and ingenuity in approach.
•  Strong organizational and time management skills; a self-starter when executing tasks.
•  Experience dealing with confidential materials and situations.
•  Proficiency in recordkeeping and data gathering along with making day to day observations.
•  Experience with working on an individual basis, as well as being a team player.
•  Must have a valid US Drivers License and a clean driving record.
•  Role requires 30% travel domestic. Travel ability is a must.
•  Located in California is a must.
•  Home office / reliable.

NexTerra is an Equal Opportunity Employer