How Former Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson Went From Aerospace To Winemaking

Bill Swanson, retired chairman and CEO of Raytheon Technologies, founded the Center of Effort winery in California’s Edna Valley in 2008. Since that time, Swanson has discovered that winemaking, as he puts it, is “like building an aircraft.” He would know, as the leader of Raytheon Company from 2004 -2014 he oversaw one of the world’s most respected aerospace, technology and defense engineering firms—a company that, among other things, helped guide the Apollo space missions to and from the Moon. Despite all the work in space, defense, and technology, Swanson was attracted to a retired life rooted in gravity—-specifically farming and winemaking. He, his wife Cheryl, and the team at Center of Effort have spent the past decade experimenting with and documenting the process of making wine and the results are pure and elegant expressions of Edna Valley terroir.

Swanson is a California native; he received his engineering training at California Polytechnic State University but credits his grandfather, who migrated to California’s San Joaquin Valley from Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast, for inspiring his love of wine. “My Grandfather taught me that 90 percent of what’s in the bottle comes from the vineyard; that is where is starts. Respect the land, take care of it and you’ll have good shot at having good wine.”

In 2019 they unveiled a sleek new visitor’s center and demonstration kitchen where you can tour the winery and enjoy seated tastings with cheese and charcuterie pairings—all by appointment. The wines, which include chardonnay, pinot noir, and rosé, have been well-received by critics but Swanson is a fan of continuous improvement and experimentation, so expect more to come, including a rosé sparkling wine soon. In the meantime, he was kind enough to share how his lessons as a leader in aerospace and engineering apply to winemaking.

My grandparents migrated from Croatia’s Dalmatian coast to the San Joaquin Valley. They had 400 acres of table grapes that were shipped around country. My grandfather maintained a small winery in the basement. I remember stomping grapes in his press, his red wine was so bold and thick you could stand a fork in it—we learned to appreciate wine as little kids, dipping bread into wine on saucer.

In 2005 I decided that I wanted 40 acres of land to grow grapes and went looking for acreage—then the recession hit. Corbett Canyon winery became available, but I was still working. I knew I wanted something to keep me busy when I retied, but never did I expect that winemaking was going to be so much work. We now own the adjacent acreage and currently have 140 acres—and we have a lot of fun. You will never learn it all with wine.

One of the lessons I learned in aerospace was to worry about the things you can control, and sustainable winemaking lets you control everything that goes into the bottle. When I bought land in 2008 it wasn’t farmed in a way that respected vineyard, so we became sustainable farmers. Everything we do is natural.

An important tenet of my life is “to ease the way for those that follow.” This holds true in work, non-profits, or anything I do in life. For some wineries, all of the best information is in their heads, and none of the best processes or practices are documented. Your legacy happens after you leave, not while you are there. We spent a lot of time at the winery writing everything down, creating processes. We tried different things and documented the best ones. We also put human resources discipline into place. It’s not clear how many wineries have performance goals, measurements of progress, or merit reviews but you really need these things to be successful.

One of the things that amazed me about wine industry was the lack of uniform cost structure. There are a few different types of wineries: small family-owned, corporate owned, yacht vineyards (where they spend more money on winemaking then they’ll ever get out of business…it is a yacht, never profitable), and then there are people in it who love farming, sharing wine, and are trying to have a break-even business that pays for itself. All are different models and there is not one single place to go to buy a standard software package for the wine industry. The accounting is done from the ground up (no pun intended). There is nothing you can buy that standardizes wine industry accounting or business operations. Each business has to develop their own or modify something different.

The Burgundian wines were the ones that spoke to me. I have had the chance to try wines all over the world and the wines of Burgundy, both chardonnay and pinot noir, are the most memorable for me. Not many people get to taste really good pinot—-if you get a good one on your taste buds then you are ruined for life. Pinot is one of the hardest to grow and our team does a great job. But, winemaking is like building an aircraft—it takes a long time. We are fortunate, we have 300 days of sunshine and we have a transverse valley which means wind can enter from two directions. We get a very fruit-forward wine, the pinot is a thinking person’s wine; it’s a complicated wine.

Our Giallo Solare, (2015) Chardonnay is the essence of Edna Valley terroir. It’s bright crisp and has citrus and other flavors. This one was fermented and aged in concrete, which helps to preserve the purity of its fruit character. We will also do a red in the cement. I like giving the winemaking team different tools to experience and try things, small lots of very special wines.

Our Prova Pinot Noir (2017) is a truly special lot of a few barrels that were more elegant and different than our normal pinot. In Italy, when they build the cars they write Prova on the license plate which means to try, to test, so we decided to name this one Prova… and for full effect, we turned label vertically so it’s like a license plate.