Our Team in the Cellar, from Left to Right: Jon Ruel, Jahblet Lona, Bryan Kays, Manny Flores, Omar Mora, Zeke Neeley, Gustavo Ramirez, Gavino Villegas.

In the Cellar

Wine is our shared passion at Trefethen. As a product, it is unique in the way it nourishes not only the individual, but the community as well. Nothing else brings people together in quite the same fashion. At Trefethen, winemaking reflects this. Our wines are made not by a single individual, but by a team of passionate people. Behind every bottle is the fine work of these gentlemen, led by Jon Ruel and Zeke Neeley.

Zeke Neeley, Winemaker

Zeke earned his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from the University of California at Davis. He then worked several years in the biotech industry in South San Francisco, focusing on cancer research. A love of wine led him back to school for his Masters in Viticulture and Enology at U.C. Davis.

While pursuing his Masters at Davis, Zeke did an internship in Napa at a well-known winery called Trefethen Family Vineyards. That experience made such an impression on him so that, after stints at wineries in Santa Cruz and Sonoma, Zeke jumped at the chance to work with the Trefethen team once more.

Zeke sees a winemaker as part scientist, part craftsman, and part guidance counselor. The natural end-product of a grape fermentation is not wine but vinegar. Wine needs to be guided to maturity and to do so requires a detailed understanding of microbiology and chemistry, a discerning palate, and a bit of creativity. He feels that his main goal is to create wines that showcase the excellent and unique fruit we harvest from the vineyards at Trefethen each year.

Bryan Kays, Assistant Winemaker

Bryan obtained an undergraduate degree in English Literature from Cal Poly, SLO. Like any good English major, Bryan found refuge in wine, and quickly developed a healthy interest in the subject.

Bryan began his wine career as a field worker and cellar rat in the Sierra Foothills. After a couple of vintages and thousands of questions to the winemaker, Bryan returned to UC Davis to earn a degree in Viticulture and Enology.

Bryan joined Trefethen in 2006 as a Viticulture intern. Fascinated with estate-grown wines and the opportunity to work with some of the valley’s long-term residents, Bryan worked his way into the cellar, and ultimately to Assistant Winemaker.

Bryan’s goal is to create wines that are balanced and true to type. He believes the winemaker’s two most critical decisions for any given wine are harvest date and press date. When those two decisions are perfectly timed, the winemaker’s job is then to simply let each wine develop its own flavors and nuances, and keep his (or her) hands out of it. Winemaking is as much about restraint as it is about action.