We bought the Fiddletown property in 1991. It was a hobby farm then, with a variety of crops, including 250 "training vines." In 1997, we ripped out the old vines (and lots of fruit and nut trees) and prepared the two-acre DAMAS Vineyard for replanting. Our Zinfandel vines are of the Deaver clone, grafted onto phylloxera-resistant 110R rootstock.

Our first harvest was in 2000, and our early grapes went to Grapeleaf Cellars in Berkeley, where Tom Leaf produced award-winning Zin from them. Some of our 2001 grapes went to Eno, where winemaker Sasha Verhage turned them into Small Town Hero Zinfandel. Every year we reserve some of our crop for home winemakers, because we believe high-quality fruit should be made available to the non-commercial guys, too.  In 2005 and 2006, some of our crop went to Charles Spinetta winery, a fourth-generation winery in the nearby Shenandoah Valley of California.

In 2005, we began selling estate grown wines under our own DAMAS Vineyards label, with assistance from the folks at Drytown Cellars in Amador County. Since 2006 vintage we have had our wines made by wine maker extraordinaire, Mark McKenna, who is now the wine maker at the new Andis Winery and is also actively involved in handcrafting small batches of other award-winning Amador County wines, including our new white Rhone blend, Shenandoah Blanc.

DAMAS means "ladies" in Spanish, but it is also an acronym made up of the initials of the vineyard founders--Deborah and Mara and their dog, Scooter (see photo below, taken a few years back when the founders were slimmer and had fewer grey hairs). Scooter's last harvest was in 2001. Since then, a German Short-haired Pointer named Uli--but with the nickname of "Spud" to keep the acronym honest--has taken over vineyard management duties.