I was born and raised in Greenfield, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee.  I attended Marquette University, and graduated in 1991 with a BS in Chemistry.  In the fall of 1991 I moved to Evanston, Illinois, and began graduate studies at Northwestern University.  My goal was to earn a Ph. D. in Analytical Chemistry, then find a well-paying job doing research and development.  While at Northwestern, I enrolled in some wine appreciation classes hoping to break up the monotony of my research.  Six months later the wine courses were more interesting than my research; I decided that I would rather pursue a wine-related job than a career in chemistry.  By December of 1992 I had earned a MS in Analytical Chemistry; that same month I was accepted to the Viticulture and Enology department at UC Davis. I moved to California in May of 1993 and began classes that fall.

I worked my first harvest in 1994 at Hess Collection Winery.  I spent 6 months in the cellar, and then returned to school.  During the 1995 vintage, I worked at Cuvaison Winery, in both the cellar and the lab.  After six months, I went back to Davis to finish my thesis:
“Investigating Methods of Detecting Urea in Wine.”  In the summer of 1996, I received my MS in Enology and returned to Cuvaison for the upcoming harvest, as the enologist.
Immediately after harvest I was offered the opportunity work in Margaret River, Western Australia.  I would be the “
temporary” winemaker at a small ultra-premium winery – Pierro Margaret River Vineyards.  I left for Australia in January 1997 and returned to Cuvaison in August, just in time for the 1997 harvest there in California.

After my winemaking experience in Australia, it was hard to go back to being an enologist; so I began searching for a winemaking position in the Napa Valley. I answered a help-wanted ad the local paper which read “small, family-owned winery looking for a hands-on winemaker.” I joined Tony and Jo Ann Truchard at Truchard Vineyards in January 1998.