Dr. Sheila Adams Pours Her Heart into Kai-Simone Winery

WORDS BY NATHAN MATTISE PHOTOS BY PATTY ROBERTSON

Dr Sheila Adams is no stranger to challenges. She was a Behavioral Health Officer with the U.S. Army who served for more than two decades. She also spent time in academia, earning her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin with a social science research focus. But when Adams retired from the military in 2016 ready to start her next act, she never could have predicted the challenges ahead. Going from long hours and the emotional toll of mental health and military work virtually anything else had to be easier — especially if that anything else involved wine, right?

" Well, they drove me to drink in the military,” jokes Adams, who is now the founder, CEO and manager of KaiSimone Winery alongside her husband, Donald, and which they named after their two children. “No, I’d been in the military 28 years, but truth be told I always wanted my own business. I loved what I did in the military, but sometimes you feel it’s time to try something different. And it was time.”

As you might imagine, shifting from mental health work and military life to wine isn’t the most natural career transition. Adams put in nearly three years of work between retiring from the military and opening Kai-Simone Winery in Spring Branch in Fall 2019. Luckily, she was not afraid of intensive training. Breaking into wine without any industry background might seem daunting. But the specialty knowledge required — from understanding grape agriculture to the winemaking process to the logistics of operating a vineyard — sent Adams into a familiar place: a period of extensive research and learning.

“I’m a retired Lt. Colonel. I was obviously very high up and had been in leadership a majority of the time I was in the military,” she says. “Well in my field I might be an 8 or 9 or 9.5 out of 10 in terms of my experience, but in the wine industry I was a 0.5. I had to go back to school so to speak. And if I don’t feel like I’m adept or knowledgeable about something, I don't mind reaching out.”

Adams read plenty as part of her preparation, but reaching out to experts is exactly what she credits for helping to get Kai-Simone off the ground. Back in 2017, one of her first decisions was hiring wine consultant Tom Payette. “He was like my private tutor,” Adams says, recalling how they’d spend five to six hours per week talking through details as granular as what building materials to use at the winery.

On top of that, Adams visited roughly 40 wineries across the U.S., allowing her to see both what other wine professionals were doing as well as connect with them to ask about business and procedures. Adams can draw a direct line from that time of self-guided study to Kai-Simone’s initial success. Her cellar is a prime example. Adams initially envisioned a highly designed space accented by striking floor tile. “[My consultant, Payette] waited ‘til I was done and then said, ‘Sheila, look. I can see your vision and it’d probably look great. But it’s not practical,’” Adams recalls. “‘In the process of winemaking, the erosion that will come, the constant water on the floor, the chemicals used for cleaning ... it’s just not going to work.’"

Being the thorough professional she is, Adams didn’t immediately take this at face value. But Payette suggested she visit San Antonio’s Freetail Brewery to see the chiller system she’d be using, and Adams noticed an unexpected detail at the brewery — tile floors. When she asked the head brewer about the tile, he said, “It’s the worst decision we made. It was so nice when we put it down, but it sucks — the grout lines can’t stay clean, the acid eats at it.”

Adams' trip to Freetail also uncovered another of her strengths developed from her previous career. Having worked so long in behavioral and mental health, Adams has a high-level people focus. This strength not only lends itself to quality customer service at the winery (she preaches engagement, being transparent and treating everyone like a VIP), but, also, behind the scenes, Adams excels at finding collaborators. While chatting at Freetail, for instance, Adams learned that the head brewer had gone to school to be a winemaker. More than a year later, she brought him on as the head winemaker at Kai-Simone. Over the past two years, as businesses of all kinds have had to pivot due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Adams found nearby partners outside of wine, like a soy candle maker, who could collaborate on small scale events at the winery. And, in 2021, when a local farmer came by the winery to offer microgreens, Adams again saw potential. She ended up partnering with the farmer to send him for training and to industry conferences to help her grow grapes at Kai-Simone.

But perhaps the greatest skill Adams has transferred over from her previous career is resiliency, a way of facing problems head on and searching for attainable solutions over time. As if opening a business in a new field isn’t difficult enough, Adams and Kai-Simone Winery got started just months before the pandemic took hold and barely a year before Texas’ historic winter storm that was particularly hard for those in agriculture. “It’s been horrible, I’m not going to say otherwise,” Adams says regarding those challenges. “When I look at what I expected to make, it’s not close. But we’re not sinking, we can pay the bills.” When normal operations weren’t feasible, Adams looked for creative alternatives and the winery leaned heavily into building up wine clubs, hosting outdoor activities and offering intimate private event space. Back when she first chose wine as her next act, one of Adams’ biggest motivations was the industry’s lack of diversity, something she saw firsthand during her research trips. At the time, the city of Spring Branch, where Kai-Simone is located, didn’t have any nearby Black-owned wineries. Seeing this, Adams set a long-term goal to do what she could to make it easier for Black professionals interested to enter the wine industry. While the challenges of day-today business in the COVID-19 era have kept her from holding the trainings and workshops she envisions, she’s naturally started to make progress. Adams consistently responds to people seeking professional advice on site or through social media, given how helpful other winemakers were to her when she was getting started. When possible, she’s made a point to hire a diverse staff and partner with diverse professionals. That microgreen farmer now turned vigneron, for instance, is a Black, military veteran like Adams.

“I’m not yet an expert in the field, but I now probably know more than most people,” she says. “If you really look at this industry, there are many different models for a winery.” And so far, for this small winery outside of the Fredericksburg strip with big ambitions, the model Adams created looks like a winner.