Moving On

I quit my job.

Wait, what?

Yes, I did it and it wasn’t easy.

After 21 amazing vintages at Ste. Michelle Wine Estates , I’m leaving to start a new incredibly exciting adventure in the wine world (more on that at a later date). This was a hard decision to make because I loved every second of my time with this amazing company, making meaningful wines across the West Coast of the United States, but it's also hard because I’m leaving the wine region I’ve called home, and where I have been lucky enough to make wine since 2001, Washington.

After a cold, wet and incredibly emotional season in 2001, Washington State had harvested ~97,000 tons of grapes, last year (2022) we crushed 245,000+ tons of premium wine grapes, such an amazing growth fueled by passion, grit, and the shared belief that WA is one the greatest places on earth to grow grapes and make wine.

Over the last two decades I’ve been privileged to work alongside an amazing group of people, people that care so deeply about wine that it hurts. I have learned so much from this community, they have shaped my perspective as a winemaker, my expectations as a farmer, this group of people helped me achieve my dreams, you all made me who I am today, and for that I will be always grateful.

We shared laughs but also tears; celebrated together our wines being #1, making more 90+ rated bottles of wine than anybody else, perfect scores, almost perfect scores, we created AVAs and sub-AVAs, new wine styles, and so much more. We also saw our crops decimated by Mother Nature and instead of giving up we showed resilience and kept going, together.

If my time at Ste Michelle Wine Estates and Washington State, was a novel it would be a classic underdog story, where all the characters accomplish the impossible, it would be a novel full of heroes, a novel where people care deeply about each other, a novel that I would read over and over again. To all of you that are protagonists of that wonderful adventure, please continue being amazing, keep getting up at the crack of dawn to care for your grapes, keep staying way too late to care for your wines, keep this place making wine – because that’s its destiny.

This is farewell for now, not goodbye forever. You are my family; I will always be your number one fan. See you out there, hopefully with a glass of wine in hand.