Working Title Wine Merchants

Vanessa Jungbluth-Fullmer is the founder of Working Title Wine Merchants and the seventh generation of her family in wine on American soil. She brings nearly 20 years of experience across all three tiers of the wine industry throughout the Midwest. But before it was a profession, it was simply what her family did.

Working Title represents small, family-owned producers who work their own ground and hold title to it — wines worth a dedicated advocate, not a slot in a broadline catalog. The portfolio is built around domestic and international regions that deserve more attention than they get and the producers within them who are doing the most compelling work.

Below is her great grandfather, Bernard "Barney" A. Jungbluth. A farmer by trade, as were generations before him, his family came to America from Germany, built a winery, got a license number and put his name on the label — Barney's Bonded Winery No. 226, Sheffield Village, Ohio. Working Title carries that same work forward, deliberately and on purpose.

In the creative world, a working title is the name given to a story before it's finished. Every producer Working Title represents has a story behind them — a family, a piece of land, a reason they still do this the hard way. We don't just import and sell the wine. We tell the story behind it.

Rooted in heritage.

Guided by taste.

Explore the Portfolio
Two men standing next to a vintage pickup truck outdoors, with a barn and laundry hanging on a line in the background, and a label for Ohio Concord Wine from 1975 in the bottom right.

Barney and a farmhand on the family farm, 1930s

A woman with long light brown hair wearing sunglasses and a white shirt, smiling and taking a selfie in a vineyard on a sunny day with a blue sky and scattered clouds.

Vanessa, somewhere in the vineyards of Champagne

Black and white photo of a man leaning against a small wooden cart with large wheels, in an outdoor farm or rural area with trees and a fenced field in the background.
Black and white photo of a man leaning against a small wooden cart with large wheels, in an outdoor farm or rural area with trees and a fenced field in the background.

Barney Jungbluth with his International 8-16 kerosene tractor in the late 1930s

Our Philosophy

Great wine doesn't need a good story. The best ones have both.

The market is crowded with labels chasing a narrative. Working Title was founded on a different premise — that the most compelling producers are the ones whose wines speak for themselves, and whose regions, families and intentions make them even more worth knowing. We seek out independent, family-owned wineries whose commitment to the land shows up in the glass. We're selective by design. Every producer in our portfolio earns their place on merit first and brings something worth talking about second.