(Forbes) - There are three ways to make wine in Bordeaux.

The best way is to buy a first-growth vineyard. (This requires an extraordinary amount of money.)

Or you can buy a winery and execute financially in the long-established business of wine in Bordeaux. (This requires an extraordinary amount of time and on-site presence.)

Or you can work with a negoçiant to buy vinified wine, at which point “making wine” becomes mostly a marketing play, typically at the lower end of the scale. (This requires an interest that Sharon Khazan Harris didn’t have.)

Those were the three scenarios that Harris felt she faced, but none of them appealed or were even possible for Harris, an American sales and marketing executive with a life-long record of visiting, studying, and working in France, from a junior year abroad during college to living with a cheesemaking family to renovating a home ten years ago in St. Émilion.

Harris wanted to make wine. She even graduated with honors from the Université de Bordeaux’s technical enology program (taught in French). But the options in front of her were limiting, especially since her professional life was still rooted in California.

Then the plot thickened.

A death in the family. An underdeveloped vineyard. A decades-long friendship.

And an opportunity to make, bottle, import, and sell Bordeaux wine from St. Émilion directly to consumers in California, under her own label, RARECAT Wines.

Sounds romantic, right? Idyllic, even. And it would be, if money were no object and Harris didn’t need for this to be a financially viable enterprise.

But she does. “We want to be successful and profitable,” Harris said, “in an industry that doesn’t always think that’s needed.”

The strategic level-headedness of Harris’ business objectives is what’s keeping the company – this dream-come-true – from turning quickly into a nightmare.

Here’s how Harris navigates the logistics of using wine as a tool for business.

Massive consolidation of distributors in the last ten years has caused a fundamental shift in the marketplace, Harris said, that makes it nearly impossible for a new brand to be noticed. It’s up to the brand to create demand for their own product, rather than rely on the services or salespeople of a distributor. In fact, Harris bypasses distributors altogether. She believes that selling DTC, or direct to consumer, is the only business model that makes sense for a small producer since going through the usual three tiers of distribution cuts too deeply into profit margins.