Alfred George Scheid

As the founder of Scheid Vineyards, Alfred George Scheid’s life has been like a fine wine to be sipped, favored and written about. The sweet taste of success didn’t come easy for the 1950 Bridgeport EV graduate who admits he wasn’t crazy about school work, yet, he spent a lot of time in Bridgeport High School’s library. “I was a lazy student who hated, and didn’t do, homework,” Scheid said. “My main interests were baseball and football. But, I loved to read and had good comprehension. “(High school librarian) Vernon Shelhammer, with the support of our principal, pushed me into reading higher-quality, more challenging books — many were classics. In January of my senior year, I read 30 Shelhammer-approved books and a few classic plays.” After graduation, his love of reading remained as he served in the U.S. Navy and later received a Bachelor of Arts from Claremont McKenna College and a Master of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School. After college, he joined the brokerage firm EF Hutton in Los Angeles and, in 1970, founded his own investment banking firm. A year later, he founded a vineyard development partnership in Monterey County, Calif., and became CEO of the corporation that managed the partnerships. Over the next few years, he formed similar partnerships as his company developed vineyards for its own account. By 1996, he had bought all the partners’ interests and, in 1997, Scheid Vineyards had its initial public offering. Scheid’s company specializes as a “vine-to-the-bottle” wine, with over 4,000 acres of vineyards and two wineries. It sells under multiple brands, coast to coast, and has two company-owned tasting rooms in California. Now operating as Scheid Family Wines, three of Scheid’s children help lead the company. In 2015, Scheid went from reading to writing books with his memoir, “Breaking Out of Beerport.” The highly-rated book sells on Amazon. “It is the story of my travels, mistakes, work and lucky breaks that let me leave the coal-mining/steel-mill village where I grew up and, eventually, earn a master’s degree from the top business school in the world,” Scheid said.