Brittany

I knew from my early winemaking experiences with my family that I wanted to be apart of the wine industry as an adult. While in college I did internships in many different fasciates of the industry, selling glass, helping out during harvests, and pouring in tasting rooms are just a few to name. These experiences led to me knowing that I wanted to one day have my very own wine label.

When Charlie and I started dating I shared my love for wine, winemaking and the industry as a whole. To say he caught the bug, is an extreme understatement. Before I knew it he was enrolling in viticulture classes, reading books about winemaking and growing grapes, and it didn’t take him long to know more about the industry as a whole than I did. Fast forward to a couple of years, we decided to start making wine in the basement of our home, we dabbled in a new variety each year, and really enjoyed the process. In 2016 we were finishing making our very first Sauvignon Blanc, and I looked at Charlie and said, “We should do this for real, let’s start our own label.” He agreed, and while we had always “talked” about starting Pressley Vineyards, that was the day we set into motion for our dream to become a reality.

Charlie

My love for viticulture and winemaking began with my college internship which then turned into my job today at The Harvey Lyman Company. I was a field scout for one of our viticulture consultants and I would walk his growers’ vineyards scouting for pests. Six months later I met Brittany in a class at Cal Poly, and as we began dating she shared her love and passion for the wine industry with me, specifically the winemaking process as a whole.

On my first trip to Brittany’s hometown of St. Helena, my mind was made up that between my experiences scouting the vineyards and learning from Brittany, I knew that I wanted a career in the wine industry. I started taking as many classes as possible in viticulture and learn the ins and outs of grape farming. Brittany and I also started our own home winemaking project and would joke that one day we would have a label of our very own. One day after processing our first Sauvignon Blanc, Brittany said that we should actually start our own label, and from that day we started making our dream a reality.