It’s 6:30 AM, The first light has yet to appear over the Mayacamas as Dick Vermeil climbs into a tractor seat.
On this September day in California’s Napa Valley, it’s harvest season. Vermeil transports young Syrah grapes from the fields to a collection point, where they will be taken to the winery for processing into one of Vermeil’s 11 wines.
Vermeil watches the frantic pace of the workers around him. Seventeen years into his career as an NFL coach, 86-year-old Vermeil still thinks and looks like one. He spends his time studying 12 workers and noticing how each of them goes about the business of cutting grapes off the vines in a slightly different way.
Vermeil nodded at one and called it “my first round draft.”
“He’s outstanding, but they’re all hard workers. There’s not one player I’d cut off the team. But I rank them and I pick him in the first round.”
Vermeil, who won 120 games as coach of three NFL teams and a Super Bowl championship in 1999 with the St. Louis Rams, isn’t the only member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame to have his name on the winery. Mike Ditka, for one, is another.
But Vermeil didn’t just lend his name to the winery. It works for her too. He lives on the other side of the country, on 100 acres outside of Philadelphia, but said most days he still does his thing for the wine business.
As a coach, Vermeil was known for his intensity and demanding style. He would often work 20-hour days that would end with him falling asleep at his desk, and would need the same from his assistants. He would go through long physical drills that would sometimes cause his players to revolt.
Ever the football coach, Vermeil attends the wine company’s annual meetings armed with notes that look like one of his giant playbooks.
“The preparations he makes for these meetings are like a game plan in football,” said Michael Aziz, one of the principal investors in Vermeil Wines. “He writes everything down on a pad of paper. He has a whole list of things we have to consider, whether it’s to work out a better way to do something or make some different wines or how we sell them.
“These kind of challenging people come out in our management meetings.”
Making wine is not a substitute for training in terms of the rush it provides. But there is fulfillment nonetheless. Vermeil says he gets satisfaction from seeing people enjoying his wine.
And while turning Vermeil Wines into a company wasn’t his idea, he says it’s a lot like running a soccer team.
“You better have good coaches,” said Vermeil. “In the wine business, it’s better to have great people in a position to make wine, people who know what they’re doing.”
Vermeil Wines is not a major producer, churning out about 2,500 cases a year compared to the largest US producers who turn in tens of millions of cases a year. But the wines frequently get high marks, with several topping 90 on a 100-point scale from Wine Advocate. Vermeil has a cabernet sauvignon coming out in 2024 to honor the 2022 induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Despite the harvest season, Vermeil is mostly involved in the marketing part of the business. He often travels around the country selling wine.
“Big companies or country club golf courses, if they can get Dick Vermeil to come out and give a wine presentation, whether it’s a wine dinner or a wine tasting, that usually stimulates some good sales,” said the former president of the Kansas City Chiefs. General Manager Carl Peterson who owns 15% of the winery. “He’s willing to do it in his own time. He’s been the catalyst, there’s no doubt about that.
“We’ve been in the red 14 years, and the last two years have been pretty bad. We’re making money. Not much, but we don’t have any more capital calls. On top of that, we’re running some really great wine. We think that’s directly related to Dick’s involvement.” It’s Dick and the focus he puts on it.”
Vermeil grew up in Calistoga, California, on the northern tip of one of the country’s most celebrated wine-producing regions. His great-grandfather Jean-Louis Vermeil, originally from Tuscany, came to the United States and settled in the San Francisco area. Napa Valley reminded him of home, so he began buying real estate, vineyards, and orchards.
The Vermeils made wine with grapes on a small scale, mostly for family consumption. Even as a young boy of 6 or 7, Dick was assigned to help out at the grapevine by rolling a press and received his first job offer.
For meals on special occasions, his parents would give Vermeil a glass of half wine and half water.
“Wine has always been a big part of holiday meals,” said Vermeil. “We would open my grandfather’s new wine and the adults would discuss it. I would sit there and listen to every word. I was fascinated by it.
“It left me with an image of, how important this product is to our family and to many families.”
It took a few years before Vermeil got into the wine business. Coaching came first, first in high school in California, then college at UCLA, and finally 15 years in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles, Rams and Chiefs. His time in the NFL was interrupted by a 14-year hiatus, during which Vermeil felt he needed a break to combat stress, making for the Hall of Fame’s most unorthodox coaching career.
Towards the end of his career, Vermeil wanted to honor his great-grandfather by putting his name on a bottle of wine. He mentioned it to a friend in Napa Valley who was making wine from his house, and a few hundred cases were made to honor Jean-Louis.
When he was coaching in Kansas City, the final stop of his career, he would hand out bottles as a Christmas gift to his team members. Friends came to him after he retired from coaching for the last time in 2005 with the idea of turning this wine hobby into a business.
Vermeil agreed, becoming a 15% owner in the process. The group of investors bought a small winery in 2007, and by the following year had Vermeil’s name on the label.
The first bottle was a blend of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, and a little sirah simply called XXXIV for the Super Bowl number Vermeil and the Rams won over the Tennessee Titans, and there are still a few hundred cases of XXXIV produced each year.
It was Todd Collins He was called to his coach’s office after a prime off-season practice. The backup quarterback immediately thought he was heading for bad news.
“He just wanted to know if I wanted to go with him to a wine tasting in Kansas City that night,” Collins recalled. With Dick, he wasn’t shy about sharing his love of wine with some of his players.
Vermeil’s influence on his former players when it comes to wine is significant.
Running back Tony Richardson collects the wine, which he keeps at home in a cellar he calls the “Vermeil Room”.
A number of Vermeil players are involved with the Chiefs in wine in one way or another. Collins and another Vermeil’s quarterback, Trent Green, each own 1% of Vermeil’s wines. Third quarterback, Damon Howard, runs a winery in Washington state with Dan Marino called Time Pass. Former wide receiver Eddie Kinnison once owned a wine shop in Kansas City, which he sold when he moved to his home in Louisiana, but he recently said he plans to open another there.
“We’d go out to dinner at training camp, just the quarterbacks, and suddenly a bottle of excellent merlot would be on our table,” Howard said. The server will say, Coach Vermeil wanted you to have this. It definitely taught me to appreciate food and wine. When I was younger, I could drink a glass of wine more as a cocktail than anything else, and it was more about how I paired it with food to enhance the experience.
“He was a huge supporter of Passing Time when we started it by buying a lot of our wines. Even today, he’ll give me advice on how to run the business.”
Vermeil’s love of wine got him in trouble with the NFL. Before kicker Morten Andersen attempted a late field goal that would give the Chiefs a close game win against the Raiders in a season, Vermeil Andersen promised a bottle of Bryant Family Vineyards cabernet sauvignon, priced at around $500, if he made the kick.
Vermeil then spoke about his planned gift to Andersen, but the league said it was in breach of salary cap rules.
Vermeil and his wife, Carol, would throw dinners at their Kansas City residence for groups of players. The building initially had a rule about no grills on the decks, but backed away from the Vermeils so they could cook for the players.
“Dick and Carol mentioned they made several of those dinners,” Collins said. “They did it when Dick was coaching in high school, coaching college, coaching in the NFL. They said they didn’t know how many they did, but it must have been hundreds and hundreds of them. Wives came, girlfriends. It was a great team-building thing.” .
“We ate steaks that Dick cooked on the grill. We had salad and vegetables. And we always had some wine. The thing about you is you’d never see him drink that much wine. He always said that when he was the kids wine was on the dinner table just like Salt and pepper.It was an essential part of the meal as it enhanced the meal.There was no drinking too much.
Vermeil ends are final His day is in the fields but not before getting a call from another Super Bowl-winning coach, former New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin, who has been supplying Vermeil with a wine address for Coughlin’s upcoming charity event.
Later, at Vermeil’s wine tasting room in Napa, Vermeil serves wine to customers from behind the bar. He spoke with a client who lived in Philadelphia when Vermeil coached the Eagles 40 years ago. Vermeil was then approached by the admirer’s wife, who told him that Vermeil had pleased her husband by saying hello.
All in a day’s work for a Hall of Fame coach.
“It’s not a huge financial deal, but at least we pay all our bills and make excellent wine,” said Vermeil. “I’m not a real knowledgeable wine guy. I know some of the basics. I don’t pretend to be an expert. I don’t have a developed palate. I know what I like. I know what tastes good to me, and if it tastes good to you, it’s a good wine no matter what.” I paid for it.”