At 26, Mini Banks Takes On Cowhorn Winery with a Dream Team That Includes Andrew Beede and Raj Parr

Katherine "Mini" Banks, the new owner of Cowhorn in southern Oregon, talks about her path to buying the acclaimed biodynamic producer of award winning Rhone varietals and her values, vision and team for the project.

Your family has a long history in the wine and hospitality industries as former investors in Screaming Eagle, Mayacamas, Qupé and Sandhi [the last with famed rockstar somm turned winemaker Raj Parr].

How did you personally decide to get into the wine industry?

Yes, I grew up in this industry my whole life. At the age of seven, my parents started getting into the wine industry and the hospitality industry. When I was eight, I was allowed to just explore on my own and roam the vines on 150 acre properties. At age nine, I started working harvest. At every winery that we were part of, we would go out and work harvest. I think when you do anything starting that young, it leaves a very strong mark on you. 

 

Growing up in Santa Barbara, California, in a holistic lifestyle, what was always around us was seeing our bodies and the earth and the environment as one. So I was always interested in understanding what part we play in how we affect our environment. I especially loved making wine as a combination of that.

 

As I got older that fascination grew and grew and grew. And yet, I had a little bit of a segue: Do I really want to be on the land? As you get into your teens and you're in high school, you're like, is this really what I want? Should I be exploring more? 

MANHATTAN

I'd grown up in all these rural areas and so at college age, I went to the opposite end of the spectrum. I went to New York and studied at Parsons and did my education there. But that quickly proved to not be a fit. The concrete jungle was not where I was meant to be. 

I missed everything about what I had grown up around, and especially since the lifestyle and the culture there was just so drastically different. Very few people in New York seemed to care about what they were ingesting and what they were putting in their bodies. The conversations were not about what the wine is or why we're drinking it. It was “Oh, we're at this place and this is what we need to order here.” 

 

I still took on a great job there in fashion, and I was enjoying it. But then through friends of a friend, I was poached by the Goop team. Despite all of the things that are said about Gwyneth Paltrow and her company Goop, it was an incredibly impactful few years being there with them because their whole goal in what they were doing was pushing boundaries that they felt were necessary to push to bring more awareness. Their brand helped people think more about  the things that we're putting into our bodies and the way that we're treating our environment. While they wrapped it all up into this trendy, lifestyle brand, at the root of it were things that were incredibly inspiring. These are things I had always been drawn to back in California. So this brand Goop definitely piqued my interest. 

Those ideas were what I  felt I needed to be doing - but not necessarily for this corporate, odd company that was doing some of these kooky things. I began to think: if they can do this, then I can jump back into what I love and depart from what I'm doing in New York.

 

PRELUDE

So I started reaching out to a lot of the people that I had grown up around who are in the wine world, and seeing what they were doing. One of those was Raj Parr. He’s such a wonderful human. I've always loved him and I looked at what he was doing. [Parr is involved in two wineries - Evening Land in Oregon and Sandhi in Santa Barbara County]. He'd taken the leap and jumped into biodynamic farming.

 

So that made me think: How do I find this intersection between what I love and this holistic sphere? And how do I combine that with my love of wine?

So that made me think I should get back into wine.

 

COWHORN

We started looking and basically Bill and Barb Steele [of Cowhorn] found us. They had been seeing a lot of potential buyers who wanted to make Cowhorn a lot more than it was. The prospective buyers were interested in making canned wines or going into mass production. But Cowhorn is an small, estate only producer making beautiful wines and certified biodynamic, a practice that is getting more attention as people recognize how important nature is in farming.

When Barb found us, we walked the property a few times and had meetings - me and her - where I think she could really tell that I had every intention of maintaining the integrity of this property and continuing what they're doing and doing more of it. 

 

It's truly spectacular - what is here and what Bill and Barb have built - and to be able to maintain that while also continuing it and growing it is such an honor. I feel it's what the world needs. I feel this [regenerative agriculture] movement is so important. People care about what they're putting into their bodies. And they should. 

Wine is the thing that brings everyone around the table and I think people are so drawn to wine because there's a story behind it. They see where these grapes are coming from. They see how it's being made. It's so much more than just, "oh here's this other you know bottle of yet another on a shelf." 

There's really a history to it. People are craving this understanding. With everything that's going on now, especially with Covid, if you're around a dinner table, where we're trapped, you want to have something that's part of that brings you around the table and is more than just beverage. 

 

For me, that is part of hospitality, of what wine does. Wine has a special power and people are drawn to that, especially me. It's a draw. It drew me back very quickly and especially when I was talking to Bill and Barb who share that passion.

THE FUTURE

 

You mentioned you want to make some changes at Cowhorn. What are you thinking about?

I want to go deeper into regenerative farming and permaculture. 

This property is so large, and the soil and everything here is ready for it. And it's craving it. So, long story short, that's what's brought me to where we are. 

Bill and Barb had a few orchards that I would like to replant. We currently have asparagus and truffle trees which are hazelnut trees inoculated with truffles. But their focus was heavily in the wine, which makes sense. That is what needed to be the focus.

 

I'm going to be hiring a winemaker, which just leaves a little bit more bandwidth to be able to give the land the attention that it needs to be able to grow these things. 

 

Going forward, there's a huge opportunity to go deeper into permaculture and regenerative farming and bring in chickens, pigs, sheep and cows, and let them graze, and let them go into more areas, naturally digging up the soil and feeding it where it needs to be fed, and allowing nature to do what it needs to do. That’s replicating the natural ecosystems that exist. 

 

Humans come in and we do what we do. We're often looking for just one product. Aside from wine, there are so many more crops that can come from this land. 

 

Of course, everything that we do is going to be a really slow rollout. You can do nothing fast in farming and in biodynamics. You need to ease the land into it. You can't all of a sudden start dry farming one day. You need to allow the environment to transition with you. I think that over the next five years, 10 years, 20 years, we will start to execute these visions. We'll start making our own compost versus bringing it in.  We'll start doing these little things that one after another hopefully 20 years from now, we will be fully regenerative and having our own closed system. But that's, you know, that takes time. 

There's no rush and I think that right now for the first year or two years, our goal would be to initially plant more grapes. There's a few plots that are definitely ready for it. Bill and Barb had the intention of doing it last summer and then the world kind of ended.

 

It's all a long-term vision here that will be executed over a long period of time.

 

THE TEAM

Bill and Barb are part of the transition team. They're going to be consulting for the next few months or years. It's a very amicable relationship. So they will be involved. 

On the land front, Andrew Beede, a biodynamic consultant, is helping us. He will be part of our team here for the next year or two years. And then I have Raj helping on the wine as well - just in the meantime, until we have a winemaker. So we are building up these powerhouses of intelligence around this type of wine and the direction it’s going.

We're looking for our own winemaker right now, but we don't want to rush. We want a biodynamic winemaker, we want someone who's able to continue what Bill and Barb were doing but also kind of put their own stamp on it.

 

But, with what I just explained, this is a 20-year project, so it needs to be someone who's really going to fit into that vision, and have the same interest that we do and really understand what we want to do. We're really taking our time on that front. 

 

Who are your investors?

In my own family, my Aunt Patricia wanted to be involved. I have just always been incredibly close to her. We had a beautiful relationship and she has always supported my path. And I've been a huge supporter of her and all that she's done. When we were finalizing things, she called and said she really wanted to have a part in it. “I don't know what that looks like but please, you know, let me know what that is,” she said. And I said, “Absolutely, I mean, what do you want? I would love to have you involved in whatever way.” 

The other two investors are old time family friends from Santa Barbara, the Gustafson's, who I've known my whole life. Will and his son Grant were eager to be involved when the idea was just surfacing. 

 

I am the majority owner and happy to have these three who have been amazing helpers. While you could say it's an investor group, it feels so much more personal than that. It was kind of this group of like-minded individuals who really want to do this project.

A LIFE HORIZON

 

How old are you? 

I'm 26 years old. 

 

Wow, that is really a great life adventure to embark on. 

I’m planning that it's going to be a whole life. And that's in partnership with amazing people. 

When I was about to finalize buying Cowhorn, I had a really inspiring conversation with Raj where he said if this is what you want to do, it's a huge commitment, but it's incredibly fulfilling and it's worth it. If you go down this path - treating and viewing the land in a holistic way - you will see the result.