Woodinville Whiskey needed more than a brand video. Owned by Moët Hennessy but rooted in the Pacific Northwest, they were preparing for national distribution and needed a story that could travel with every bottle — something a bartender could tell a curious customer, something that made the whiskey mean something before the first sip.

I came onto this project after it was won, inheriting an ambitious deliverable list and a goal, but a lot still left to define. After a deep dive into the competitive landscape, I helped shape the overall production approach and worked with the team to consolidate the scope into something achievable without sacrificing the quality the story deserved. Seven videos in all, anchored in large part by this one — a campaign that went on to earn a Hermes Gold and a Telly Gold.

For the Omlin family film, I developed the central approach: follow the family through a full day on their farm, dawn to dusk, building intimacy while also conveying the scale of what they'd built. The fire pit conversation that provides the story was my idea — a natural, unguarded setting where the family could talk to each other rather than to a camera. I conducted the conversation off-screen, posing questions and then letting them respond to one another. (Fun fact: we had to send a PA thirty miles to find a fire pit the morning of the shoot. It was worth every mile.) The film earned a Telly Silver of its own.

The result was emotional in the way only unscripted honesty can be. The co-founder of Woodinville Whiskey told us he still gets choked up watching it on the tenth viewing. We later heard the CEO of Moët Hennessy had the same reaction. When the goal is to make people feel something, that's about as good as it gets.