Dream internship: Here’s how 2 won a $120,000 yearlong gig at a Sonoma County winery

In March 2021, the marketing team with Sonoma County based Murphy-Goode Winery launched a nationwide search, looking for the person who’d be willing to “live out their ultimate dream job in wine country” by essentially becoming a wine industry intern.

The offer?

An annual salary of $120,000 a year, rent-free living in Sonoma County and 30 cases of wine to boot.

The response?

More than 7,000 people leaped on the winery’s “A Really Goode Job” solicitation, making their case on what they would bring to the position with videos.

People from many aspects of the company — sales, public relations, marketing, direct-to-consumer services — reviewed the video applications. The director of recruiting, Erica Thompson, watched all 7,266 incoming videos. Seventeen finalists were chosen.

The applicants went all out to convince the judges of their originality and qualifications: a wine rap, a musical theater-like original song, a Murphy-Goode bottle scavenger hunt, and a disappearing act. One fellow, wearing a wine logo T-shirt, jumped out of a plane to show that he was a real risk taker.

“At first we thought we’d fly out the top 10 candidates, but there were too many we really liked,” said Murphy-Goode winemaker Dave Ready Jr., who began watching when the submissions were down to about 100.

Whether you name it a publicity stunt or marketing genius, Ready said the idea to reprise “A Really Good Job” grew out of what he calls the “Murphy-Goode DNA”:

“We have this ethos of ‘doing goode’ and ‘being goode’ that included our participation in Operation Homefront, which helps returning veterans. In our brainstorming, we considered how people have been suffering from being out of work, and from the pandemic, so we said let’s do something big to give people hope, have a lot of fun, and break things open in terms of recruiting into our industry. Barbara Banke said ‘yes’ right away, and Jackson Family Wines supported it. And I mean they supported it.”

Banke is the chairperson and proprietor of Jackson Family Wines, company co-founder and wife of the late wine icon Jess Jackson. The company acquired Murphy-Goode in 2006.

Now 51, Ready has been Murphy-Goode’s winemaker for the last 20 years. His late father, David Ready Sr., founded the winery in 1985 with his good friends Tim Murphy and Dale Goode following a session of their weekly game of Liar’s Dice. Ready Jr. would later set the style for “Liar’s Dice,” “Snake Eyes” and other Murphy-Goode zinfandel wines.

Ready said that the wine industry can be tradition-bound. In looking at candidates for a dream job, the selection team was seeking new perspectives and fresh points of view.

“Our thought was to open it up to everyone,” he said. “What if you were an accountant in Des Moines but had the guts and the passion to take a big risk and come out to California wine country for the opportunity of a lifetime?”

“Everything during this process was fluid,” he said further. “Just like how the decision for two winners instead of one came about. When we were looking for a house to rent for the applicant, we found two beautiful houses in Healdsburg next to each other on vineyard property that was owned by families we knew. We said, we’ll take both of ’em.”

The team was intent on finding candidates with passion, not only for wine, but for life. That is why they spent three days, not only conducting one-on-one interviews but also interacting with the 17 finalists at lunches, dinners, wine tastings and a Kendall-Jackson Garden visit. They even played Liar’s Dice together.

“It’s true that video submissions got them here, but we needed to gauge their ability to fit into the culture because wine is about socializing and making authentic connections, it is about being excited and enthusiastic about what you do,” Ready said. “This is how we at Murphy-Goode make our wines.”

This year’s winning interns

Lindsay Perry was working in the marketing department of FloSports, a live streaming sports broadcaster based in Austin, Texas, when friends began inundating her with postings about Murphy-Goode’s wine industry dream job competition. Along with cheerleading, which is the sport she had excelled at and subsequently promoted through her job, wine is Perry’s passion. Her Instagram profile is @Lindsaywinesalot.

“If you think about it, wine and cheerleading are similar,” she says. “Every region has a different style, a different character depending on where you are, and marketing is basically cheerleading for your product.”

In her application video, Perry wanted to find the sweet spot of attention at just a bit over a minute long. Using a combination of excellent production values and a sly sense of humor, she represented herself as both athletic and competent.

“As a digital marketing specialist, I’m skilled at developing customer engagement and acquisition. Another part of my role is creating diehard passionate fans for my brand, and I want to bring that to Murphy-Goode.”

Perry closes the video spot as she floats in a sparkling blue pool. Before giving the definition of tannins to a fellow swimmer, she declares that her completion of Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Levels I and II through the Napa Valley Wine Academy enables her to “deliver hundreds of wine facts at the drop of a hat.”

During the pandemic, when Perry couldn’t travel for her job, she decided to use the time to better equip herself as a wine consumer, and to formally study the beverage she loved and often shared with her red wine-drinking parents. She successfully submitted scholarship applications to two nonprofits—Wine Unify and The Roots Fund. Both organizations have the mission to bring more BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) into the wine industry through financial support and providing opportunities for minorities “seeking a career/education in all aspects of wine.”

Veronica Hebbard is the daughter of an amateur winemaker; she grew up in the Hudson Valley wine region in a small town called Montgomery about 60 miles north of Manhattan. “When Dad started making wine in my freshman year, I thought it was awesome and wanted to help him out with it.”

While Hebbard was studying engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology, she also took classes in their Hospitality Department. She convinced a professor to let her take wine tasting and winemaking classes even though she was 19 and under the legal drinking age. “I argued that even if I couldn’t legally drink in the state of New York, it wasn’t against the law to learn about wine.” To help network within the industry, she subsequently started a wine blog: @VinowithVero.

In her application video, which is a heartfelt, vibrant and authentic presentation directly to the camera, Hebbard jokes, “Am I doing this video a little hung over from yesterday? Sure.” She later explains that she was “trying to be funny,” but in fact, when she got the phone call from her father telling her about the dream job contest, she was at a friend’s birthday party at the beach, sipping cocktails. “I was feeling it a little the next morning, but I was determined to get the video done right away.”

In another striking part of her application, she holds a bottle of Murphy-Goode in front of her and says to the viewer, “Every time I pop a cork, I am opening up a book. There is so much story inside these bottles, you just have to know how to read them.

Hebbard describes how the story-in-the-bottle idea goes back to her first wine class when the teacher and students were all swirling the pale gold liquid. “When the teacher put her nose into the glass, she told us she could smell the grass of the Loire Valley, see a farmer’s kids frolicking, and painted a complete sensual picture. I wondered, how is she getting all this from the aroma of the wine? That really intrigued me. I wanted to understand all about why wine tastes the way it does.”

Besides her passion for the “art and finesse” of wine, Hebbard, like her father — now a retired biology teacher — is interested in the science.

“In everything in life, I combine the two, which is why I worked where I worked (at Walt Disney Imagineering in Orlando, Florida),” Hebbard said. “I have a master’s in engineering management, so I’m used to looking at big processes and breaking them down, finding ways to innovate, finding efficiencies and production targets. I’m interested in sustainability and the winemaking process, but I can’t innovate on a process I don’t know.”

When asked about her impressions of visiting Northern California for the first time, Hebbard recalled seeing a yoga studio in the San Francisco airport:

“I thought, ‘Wow. I’m not interviewing for a job but for a complete lifestyle change from East Coast to West Coast.’”

Hebbard said Dave Ready has “wisdom beyond his years,” and she can see herself “hanging out with a winemaker who was also a rock musician.”

“The dream job team really knows how to do an interview!” Hebbard said. During the three-day process, the finalists met members of the Jackson family, had a blending session with the winemaker, and enjoyed a farm-to-table lunch with Jackson CEO Rick Tigner.

“It was all down to earth — except the helicopter vineyard tour — and blurred the lines of hierarchy,” she continued. “That was awesome for someone like me who wants to work where she isn’t afraid to pitch ideas to anyone and anyone will listen.”

Hebbard and her boyfriend, who currently works for ESPN, are ready for the adventure. They will be shipping their cars and belongings, then flying again into San Francisco International Airport, which has yoga on site.