Age: 45

Title: President and General Manager

Organization: Tedeschi Vineyards in 'Ulupalakua on Maui, which employs 26 people and makes about 350,000 bottles of wine a year. About 75 percent of that is pineapple wine.

High school: Governor John R. Rogers High School in Puyallup, Wash.

College: Attended Highline Community College in Washington and the University of Hawai'i, majoring in accounting

Breakthrough job: "If I had a breakthrough job it was probably this one right here, because I was given all these opportunities to use the skills I had."

Little-known fact: "I really didn't come in with a background in the wine industry, or really in anything of being able to run a winery. ... It was more of just kind of picking up something that I really loved and I kind of learned it along the way."

Q. What are the biggest challenges you face as a manager?

A. My biggest challenge right now is in controlling growth and being able to move forward in the right way and with our community here because 'Ulupalakua is a very small rural place. We are not a town. We have limited infrastructure for everything from facilities to water to electricity and being able to manage right now this demand, as well as the people that come from everywhere.

I run four really very unique different departments and yet trying to get them all to constantly understand that they're dependent on each other. If there is no vineyard, there is no winery. If there is no winery, there is no tasting room.

We've been able to do it with local people living in the area or Upcountry, or people who just saw that working in 'Ulupalakua is a special thing. Because it is different and that's another challenge — of finding when you do need people you're kind of limited in who wants to drive to 'Ulupalakua to go to work. So it has to be something where they really see something special in it, they want to be a part of it.

Q. How do you motivate your employees?

A. I try to move them around in their departments a lot. That is a great motivation because each area, they think that they have the hardest job. But if I can bring the winemaking staff in to do a tasting or come, say, to work the Taste of Honolulu with me or go to a different event, and they get to hear all these great things that people think about their wines — that motivates them. Because other than that, they're in the cellar and they're in the vineyard.

So I think the interaction from people from the outside world with my staff really helps, because otherwise we can be very isolated here.

For the most part, we're really well-respected in the wine world, probably more so than we are in Hawai'i. In Hawai'i they're like, "Oh, that's that pineapple winery." But when we have people come from grape-growing areas and they know how difficult it is, what we're doing, they're just so excited to help and be part of it and work with our staff.

Q. How are you engineering a re-invention of Tedeschi Vineyards?

A. When they started, they weren't thinking at all of pineapple wine, that wasn't part of the idea. They were planting grapes, they were going to make a Hawaiian champagne and that was really the main motivation at that time. The pineapple wine got started because they needed something to work with because it was going to be years before they had the grape wines ready.

And luckily it took off and it became kind of a novelty.

I think initially when the Tedeschis started it their goal was to kind of compete, and in it you're kind of forced to face the fact that you are different. I think the wine world also changed and it's a good thing to try to be able to identify who you are, to be able to set yourself apart because at this point there's so many wineries and we're all looking for a marketplace.

I kind of said we need to improve what were doing here, make our product the best that we can. We don't need to compete with anybody else in the world. We need to do the best we can here in Hawai'i with a flavor and style that is ours and it is unique. And in that we can be and did prove to be very successful.

We don't have to be like a French wine, we don't have to compete with a California wine. We need to do the best we can with a Maui style and be unique in that. What I had to do was prove that we had an audience, prove that we had customers.

And so we (looked again) at the vineyard five or six years ago. It was going through deterioration. We were really concerned. We didn't really know what was happening and it's hard to find someone to help you in that area.

(I decided) I want to start over, I want to plant new vines. We want to take what we've learned over the last 20, 30 years and we want to start over in the vineyard. And we started replanting and this is the new age that we're working with. Now what we're doing is we're growing syrah, we're growing chardonnay, we're growing chenin blanc, all these different things, and we're going to start slowly introducing them.

Q. What do you think Hawai'i needs to do to grow its diversified agriculture industry?

A. I think one thing is that we who live in Hawai'i have to learn to support locally grown products — you know, recognize them in the store and support them and purchase them.

What you need to do is look at the big picture and be able to support our own local ranches, farmers and products even if it is a little bit more.

The other thing that I would love to see, and it's a piece that we've been trying to work on here, is being able to create value-added products from locally grown agriculture like our wines, like we're doing jellies.