I fell in love with wine in my first real job, working for a wine merchant back in Scotland. When I next fell in love, with a vivacious, adventurous, and beautiful Californian girl, I brought my passion to the U.S. — managing a winery tasting room in Southern California at 23. Then life took me on a circuitous journey through careers in sales and marketing unrelated to wine. But the passion never left, and I’m thrilled to be living the dream of starting Hamilton Family Wines, with that beautiful Californian girl, my wife and mother of my two beautiful children, Lindsay, by my side.

My first wine tasting experience was as a student at UCSC, on a tour at a now forgotten Gilroy winery. Enamored with the experience, I spent $35 on a bottle red wine, which was a lot of money for a starving student in the early 2000s. But, I shared that bottle with a cute boy from Scotland, and, well, you can see how that worked out. Several years later, we made our first garage wine in Berkeley. The wine was terrible, but the dream was born. Having had the incredible good fortune to make the move to the heart of the beautiful Sonoma Valley, our mission for Hamilton Family wines is simple, to make wines that we love and that showcase this amazing place.

We’re incredibly lucky to work with Jess’ unique talents. A Sonoma native, he’s part of the terroir he carefully crafts into our wines. A strong believer, as are we, in allowing the fruit, the vines, the roots, the earth, and everything else in the vineyard to express themselves, no one works harder at making natural and minimal-intervention wines.