MCKENZIE SANVIDO : UNTAMED WINE ESTATES

Mckenzie Sanvido is another woman shaking up the industry. The 31-year-old California native studied biology and chemistry at the University of Nevada, Reno. There, she received a Chemical Ecology grant and fellowship through the National Science Foundation. The opportunity led her to South America, where she performed field work and chemical analysis in the rainforests of Brazil and Costa Rica. Though she had originally planned to pursue a career in pharmaceutical research, her time abroad gave her the conviction to try something different. She took a job as a wine chemist with Constellation Brands and discovered a love for the wine industry while working in Sonoma, New Zealand, and Monterey, to name a few.

This experience proved invaluable to Sanvido, who later went to work with a custom crush facility in Salinas, California. It was there that she realized there wasn’t a local laboratory available for testing wine. In fact, the closest one was in Napa, located three hours away, with turn-around times for samples taking upwards to a week.

At the same time, she had noticed how quickly the Texas wine industry was growing. Determined to fill a void and make a change, Sanvido, along with her South African winemaking husband, Dane, moved to Johnson City in 2019. One month later, they opened The Lab Pros.

“We service around 120 wineries in Texas, Louisiana, California and New York,” she said of their operation. At the lab, they work with winemakers to test the wines’ sugars, acids, and fermentation process, along with performing monthly regulatory checks leading up to bottling. Through the operation, they can deliver results between 24 to 48 hours. “We grew that business really nicely and got to a point where we wanted to do something else, and that was to start a winery,” she shared.

In May, the couple brought their dream to fruition with the opening of Untamed Wine Estates, a production winery and tasting room. After years of working with large corporate wineries, the name was a fitting descriptor for their new lease on life. “We got tired of climbing the corporate ladder,” said Sanvido. “We wanted to break free from that and become untamed.”

Today, she and her husband are focused on quality first and foremost, pursuing grapes from small family growers in places like Monterey and the Russian River Valley. All of the fruit is then transported to Untamed and produced in-house. While Dane manages the winemaking role, Sanvido handles the lab work, in addition to overseeing the tasting room and foodservice operation.

“I’ve always loved cooking and wine and how they interact with each other,” she said. "I developed a huge passion for it. Seeing people enjoy your food and wine, there’s really nothing better.”