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Sarah is a smart, fearless, wine-bottle-sabering (yep, you read that right), hot-pink-sneaker-wearing Boss Lady and Music Trivia Champion who has dedicated her life to bringing Clean-Crafted™ wine to everyone she knows. After several years of practicing commercial litigation, Sarah decided to leave the world of law behind and pursue her passion for wine.
Now, as Founder and CEO of Scout & Cellar, Sarah is a trailblazer that is disrupting the wine industry. When she discovered the troubling reality that a large majority of wine is produced using toxic pesticides and artificial processing aids that can be damaging to the human body AND the environment, she developed a non-negotiable standard for grape growing and winemaking that ends with a more authentic glass of wine and better care for the planet. In founding Scout & Cellar, Sarah established the company’s Clean-Crafted Commitment® that requires that grapes are farmed without toxic pesticides, and that wine is produced without artificial processing aides, is low in sulfites, and contains no added sugar.
Sarah is achieving tremendous success as a female leader in a male-dominated trade. According to a 2019 Women of the Vine and Spirits Women in the Workplace report, just 16 percent of the wine industry’s vice president-level employees are women. Additionally, a 2020 Women Winemakers of California report states that women hold just 14 percent of California’s lead winemaker positions. Through Scout & Cellar’s direct-to-consumer business model, the company has empowered nearly 20,000 independent business owners across the country—predominantly women—to earn an income by marketing the brand’s Clean-Crafted™ wine to their personal networks of friends and family.
Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sarah led Scout & Cellar to achieve more than 100% revenue growth in 2020, exceeding its impressive track record of growing more than 70% year over year since its founding in 2017. This accomplishment led Scout & Cellar to secure the #2 spot on SMU Cox’s Dallas 100 rankings of the 2020 fastest-growing entrepreneurial businesses in Dallas-Fort Worth. The company is also on the 2021 list, appearing in the top 10 once again. In 2020 alone, Sarah was recognized as an Inc. Female Founders 100 honoree and an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year® Southwest Award winner.
Growth of this magnitude would be challenging in a normal environment, but Sarah’s leadership and emphasis on remaining grounded in Scout & Cellar’s core values was paramount to the company’s ability to thrive in 2020. Authenticity, transparency, passion, family and an unwavering desire to do the right thing are Sarah’s—and therefore Scout & Cellar’s—guiding principles that shape every aspect of who the company is, how to give back and how to approach business in general. Her focus on those values set Scout & Cellar up for success as the field of Independent Consultants increased by 143% from the end of 2019 to the end of 2020. Sarah made several strategic hiring decisions to ensure the company’s infrastructure was equipped for the growth, increasing the staff roster by 63% from the end of 2019 to the end of 2020.
In addition to her focus on core values, Sarah has remained committed to identifying ways to do better for the community and the planet. Through the business practices that she and her team established, Scout & Cellar directly supports more than 2,000 acres of regenerative farmland and uses 100% recyclable materials and carbon-neutral facilities. Under her leadership, Scout & Cellar established a partnership with 1% for the planet in 2020, giving a portion of the proceeds from Epic Pursuit brand sales to organizations focused on bee conservation and research. The company also made donations totaling more than $117,000 in 2020 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, NAACP Empowerment Programs and North Texas Food Bank, providing meals to 31,000+ food-insecure people with the help of Independent Consultants.
