Guy Davis

Guy Davis' wine roots run deep, reaching back to the age of nineteen when he worked in a French restaurant in Seattle while pursuing an economics degree at the University of Washington. In 1984, Davis graduated from college with a degree in Management and Finance.

In 1988, he created an opportunity to work on some winery finance projects and by 1989 had moved to Sonoma County and started working as the wine buyer for a small mail order wine company specializing in wine from small, boutique wineries. Along the way, Guy's work brought him in contact with creative, artisan wine makers, many of whom possessed the passion of great artists. These small-production, hands-on winemakers became a real inspiration. Davis, determined to learn and master the craft of making wine himself, signed on to work the 1989 harvest at Sky Vineyards, a little winery atop Mount Veeder in Napa Valley. On the weekends, Davis labored and learned his craft, whether it was bottling, labeling, pruning or harvesting. He took every Viticulture and Enology class offered at Santa Rosa Junior College and pursued night and weekend courses in the winemaking program at the University of California, Davis.

It was after a stint as director of marketing at Kendall-Jackson that in 1994 he started Passport Wine Club: a mail order company that connected tiny wineries from all over the United States to consumers seeking rare, small-production wines. In 1995, Davis produced his first commercial vintage: 250 cases of old vine Zinfandel from the Russian River Valley. In 1996, he bought his own vineyard in Russian River Valley comprised of 100-year-old Zinfandel vines, and in 1997, crushed his first vintage under the Davis Family Vineyards label.