Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, David was the first member of his Italian-American family to attend college, enrolling at the University of California, Davis, where he earned degrees in Viticulture & Enology as well as Italian in 1998. He discovered winemaking after some persuasion by a fellow schoolmate to take an Introduction to Winemaking course and recalls the experience as being “very difficult but also challenging and fascinating. It was truly the right place at the right time.” Before graduation, the Hayward native worked in Barbaresco and Casteggio, Italy to gain in-the-field cellar experience and fell in love with the old-world style of craftsmanship, before returning to the US to work as a protégé under respected winemaker Ray Einberger in Washington State. Einberger, having trained at the storied Bordeaux houses of Château Mouton-Rothschild and Château Clerc Milon, instilled in David a rigorous and detail-oriented approach to winemaking, leaving a long-term, profound impression on him.
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